From article in Proceso, June 5, 1995. OIL IS BEHIND SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IN CHIAPAS [On May 24, 1995, the Jesuit Mardonio Morales, who has spent more than 30 years working with the indigenous Tzeltal people, spoke at a private study meeting on Mexican reality. His report dealt with oil fields as a major factor in the current conflict in Chiapas.] It is difficult to discuss the internal situation in Chiapas due to the complex spectrum of interrelated action. Since the second attempted dialogue in San Andres it has become clear that the character of the battles being waged between the two sides is one of low intensity conflict. Big interests are at stake. On the one hand is the very survival of the indigenous communities, not only in Chiapas, but throughout the country; on the other, unrestricted control of raw materials, which are the lifeblood of the economic neoliberalism that is choking us and that has farreaching international ramifications. My sole intention was to spend time with Tzeltal communities in the municipalities of Sitala and parts of Ocosingo, out of the San Bachajon Mission. In the process, I was able to witness the growth and development of these forces that now confront each other in a death struggle. I will focus on an important factor which I think is a guiding principle the state government and which can explain its present behavior, which may seem to us very obtuse and closed-minded. This factor is oil. I am going to talk about what I have seen. This is testimony, not a technical study. I will follow these steps: oil discoveries; timber exploitation; settlement; "cattlization;" infrastructure (roads, water, electricity); oil exploration and exploitation. 1. Discovery of oil In the early months of 1964 I toured for the first time the Bachajon lowlands, in the municipality of Chilon, which were then completely wild and very sparsely populated. I arrived at the Sacun ravine, and there at a stream of the Sacunil River, in Cubwits, I found a bronze Pemex plaque set in cement, indicating the year 1961. When I came down the ravine, I was informed in Alan Sacun that there were Pemex markers there, too. That was the first bit of information that struck me. As early as 1961, in the most remote regions of the jungle, oil had clearly been located. Moreover, along the main roads crossing the jungle from the lowest area, towards Palenque, leading up to Ocosingo, I found markings in red paint every 100 meters on the rocks and trunks of tall trees along the roadway. They said EP and had a number. My travel companions would tell me that occasionally "engineers" would come by and make these measurements. In the ensuing years, on my subsequent work tours, I saw how these measurements were extended to all the roads and footpaths. In the highest mountain range, near Coquilteel, above Chichi, I saw tar seeping from the cracks in the rocks during the hot season. My travel companions remarked that tar was easily found in many places, and that in the old days they would use it for certain medicines. As the years went by I confirmed that the Pemex engineers were stepping up their activities. They actually told me where most of the oil deposits had been located, as in Jetha and along the banks of the Paxilha River. During the Lopez Portillo administration, at the time of the oil boom, these sites in Jetha were reported on television. 2. Timber exploitation. Concurrently with this exploratory work, ever since the fifties there hd been an intensification of the exploitation of mahogany and other hard and soft woods, all of them precious, carried out by foreigners using the sawmill at Chancala and doing business as companies that were Mexican in name only. The government's concession was that they could take whatever timber they found within 500 meters along any road or path they opened up. Naturally, they took whatever they pleased. The jungle had been awe-inspiring. At first, I could walk for entire days in the shade, and could see neither sky nor landscape; everything was green. Once the timber exploitation was in full swing, the settlement process began. Thus the timber company had to establish a relationship with the new members of the ejidos, or ejidatarios. As a result, a strange partnership was formed. Since they were totally lacking in technical knowledge and advisors, it was to the ejidatarios' advantage to have assistance in clearing trees from the land the government was offering them to plant corn. Moreover, the paths that the timber company made were very helpful to the ejidatarios' internal communication. With modern machinery and the huge sawmill at Chancala, the destruction of the jungle took giant steps forward, compounded by the traditional slash and burn system that finished off the remaining nonharvestable trees on the ejidos. I thus saw over ten years how the plunder progressed. >From 1968 to 1978 the path was extended from Tulilha lands to the Pico de Oro lands. It was some 200 kilometers long. Fifteen days ago I got a ride from a huge trailer that was coming from Mazatlan to get mahogany from Pico de Oro. Despite all the many formal complaints were made by both institutions and individuals to public opinion and government officials, this process of destruction has continued on its course. The explanation is simple: existing timber resources are utilized, ande terrain is made ready for the next phase, oil exploration and exploitation. 3. Settlement In the early sixties the government opened the "national lands" to campesino/indigenous groups from the highlands and even to campesinos from other places like Veracruz, Puebla and Guerrero. Specialists in the field harshly criticized this opening of the jungle to agriculture. The jungle is not land for planting, but for forests. No attention was ever paid to this argument. Instead, this land which was ill-suited to agriculture was irresponsibly handed over to hundreds of ejidos. The strategic reason is now clear. On the one hand was the need for cp labor; on the other, the need to finish preparing the land for oil exploration and exploitation. Cheap labor was required, meaning people who were controlled and controllable, who would acquiesce to whatever was coming. That's why there was no planning of how to organize the settlements that were forming. It was a sociological time bomb. Each settlement consists of indigenous people and campesinos from various places, who arrived hungry and anxious for land. At first they were united by a common need; then different interests, customs and needs began to appear. It is extremely difficult to organize them, and there is always someone who is willing to serve the interests of the powerful. That is what the government needs: disorganized, controllable people. In addition to this came the arrival, starting in 1975, of successive waves of groups from sects that have been a major obstacle to any attempt at organization. 4. Cattlization The next step in consummating the total and final destruction of the jue was to get the ejidos that were devoted to corn to turn to cattle-raising. To that end, in the mid-sixties the official and unofficial banks offered easy credit and abundant technical advice. In this regard, the Ministry of Agrarian Reform, which for years had been mercilessly exploiting the ejidatarios, did indeed offer generous advice so that the greatest possible number of ejidatarios converted to cattle-raising. Those who embarked on this business in the first four or five years became wealthy cattle ranchers. This prompted those who had not been drawn to cattle-raising to go to the banks in droves seeking credit. But the second phase was counterproductive for the ejidatarios. The credit was a trap so that the past due debts would leave thousands of unsuspecting people firmly in the bank's grasp. Now the objective had been achieved: whoever wants to see the Lacandon jungle will now find only the gigantic Lacandon cattle pasture. You have only to look at recent aerial photographs of the Mexican-Guatemalan border along the Usumacinta River. The Guatemalan jungle contrasts with the arid line of Mexico across the river. 5. Infrastructure Oil exploitation obviously requires a large infrastructure: roads, electricity, water, populations to provide cheap labor, food supply centers, towns that can be converted into places where technicians and skilled workers can be concentrated. I have seen how the first roads were begun, and how in a matter of a few years the communications network has multiplied. One never ceases to be surprised at how incredible roads are built while other regions that truly need to be connected remain isolated. Wherever Petroleos Mexicanos waves its magic wand, huge machines appear and make tortuous footpaths immediately disappear. For example, everyone was surprised by the road that was built at Chichi, near Bachajon, and by the construction of the immense bridge that was built in order to cross the river and get to the region where I saw tar on the very surface of the earth. The most surprising thing was that this construction abruptly stopped, once the bridge was complete, and was not resumed. Why? Of course no one was given any explanation. Soon thereafter we learned that the machinery had gone to the other end of the jungle, to Pico de Oro, where they had started drilling wells in the area bordering Guatemala. No matter how much the government postures and tries to portray this road-building as a social program, the reality of oil provides us with a different explanation. Roads that are built and left waiting for official use are left to deteriorate and be destroyed until such time as the oil industry requires them. Potable water was a battle that went on for years and years in the communities. The first fifteen years of my residency were a constant search for external financing for pipes; the communities themselves would do the work, because the State would not respond to our requests. Then the settlements were suddenly endowed with potable water, as if by magic. Conasupo's warehouses are strategically located to quickly and efficiently supply the entire oil region. To find out whether this phenomenon occurs in the Los Altos region, one has only to see the reports of those who have gone to the conflict zone to compare the government's social programs. Here in the jungle, environmental destruction and manipulation of the local population; there, neglect, hunger and disease. Noteworthy is the electricity network that has covered the entire region over the course of ten years. This is undoubtedly the clearest indicator of the rush to put in place the infrastructure that is essential to quick and efficient oil exploitation. All of us were surprised by the efficiency with which telephone has been brought to the oil region. To those of us who have struggled for years and years for the most essential services, the government's strategy in the region is quite clear. The very reform of Article 27 of the Constitution provides a logical explanation that foreshadows what is in store for us in the near term. 6. Oil exploration About six years ago, along the sides of the highways of the low region, we began to see temporary encampments of workers of campesino origin. These encampments belonged to a foreign company hired by Pemex to begin the oil exploration. The encampments quickly multiplied, and I began to find them along the roads. It is admirable: they drew straight lines starting from a settlement ine low region to the city of Ocosingo. A meter wide, the path ran through mountains, ravines and valleys, stopping for no obstacle. This caused fatal accidents among the workers, mostly Indians, which of course no one ever heard about. Every 20 meters they would dig a well, dynamite it, and collect the information with devices that the workers carried on their backs for days and months, until they reached Ocosingo. That is how they marked off the jungle territory. Of course they never asked for permission to enter ejidos or private property. The explosions resulted in the loss of many water sources; at the source of the Tulilha River, they killed all of the fish and polluted the entire irrigation channel that ran some 80 kilometers, resulting in serious problems for the ejidos that the river ran through. The protests, compaints and demands of these Chol and Tzeltal ejidos were to no avail. Along the highways the subsoil was being measured. In the midst of this intense activity came January 1, 1994, and with it, the abrupt suspension of all exploratory activity. Fifteen days ago, after the San Andres meeting, these encampments began to reappear along the highway near Chancala. 7. Oil exploitation In the region where I walk I have yet to see any wells being drilled. But from the bus traveling on the road through San Miguel to Ocosingo, I have seen drilling rigs and roads leading to other rigs. And we know there has been a great deal of activity in the Pico de Oro region. Of course everything has now come to a halt. There's a reason why we have Army all over, even though we are very far from the conflict zone. I believe that this testimony I am now giving about what I have seen from 1964 to the present, and the discovery of the relationship between oil, timber, settlement, cattlization, and infrastructure, explains the government's hard-line, overbearing attitude. If they are seeking oil and the riches that lie underground, can an agreement ever be reached whereby the indigenous people can have their autonomous territory? As long as the indigenous are regarded as beasts of burden, can there be an agreement to respect their dignity? By way of conclusion, I would like to complete the picture with two more thoughts. First: we all want peace, and think it would be suicide to go to war against the Army and government supported by imperial foreign powers. We all know that the war against indigenous people, environmental destruction, the subjugation of entire peoples, hunger, disease and premature death are the lifeblood of the wealth of the few, organized under neoliberal slogans backed by armed force. We know that this is nothing new, that it has always been this way. Tht is why the !Ya basta! of January 1, 1994, resonated among us all. This past year and a half has only strengthened our conviction and has proven that this is not something local, but rather part of the structure of the system that punishes us all equally. It is clearly a national matter. The demand for democracy and for a structural change that will make real the slogan "all for all" is penetrating the national consciousness. Second: Why in Chiapas and not in Veracruz or Tabasco? Oil exploitatin in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche has destroyed jungles, torn apart towns, done away with the thriving ecology of southeastern gulf rim. Why was it that we heard the !Ya basta! in Chiapas? The answer has to do with the system's deep resentment against the San Cristobal Diocese and don Samuel: 35 years of consciousness-raising evangelization; 35 years of commitment to those who are exploited, ignored, despised, dispossessed; 35 years of searching for ways forward without fear of making a mistake, in a constant attitude of conversion of those who have been marginalized by the system; 35 years of evangelical practice in search of dignity and respect for these millenary peoples. The best evidence of this faithfulness to oppressed people is the violet reaction of slander and irrational abuse. [Translation by David Mintz (dmintz@ix.netcom.com)]