Original Spanish: https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2003/02/01/cuales-son-las-caracteristicas-fundamentales-de-la-iv-guerra-mundial/
November 20, 1999
(On this occasion, we have allocated the question section to a text that we believe answers many of the questions that are raised today in the face of the situation of war)
A few months ago, La Jornada published, under the title “The Fourth World War,” a fragment of the talk given by Subcomandante Marcos before the International Civil Commission for the Observation of Human Rights in La Realidad, Chiapas, on November 20, 1999, of which its outline was published in letters 5.1 and 5.2, in November of the same year with the title: “Chiapas: the war: I. Between the satellite and the microscope, the gaze of the other”, and “II. The ethnocide machine.” The following is the full text of said talk.
Chiapas: the war
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Originally, this talk was conceived as a letter, anticipating that a personal meeting was not possible. So it remains like a letter read aloud and in front of the recipient, or rather in front of one of the recipients, because it is addressed to national and international civil society. I chose the date of the anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, also out of mischief, for the reason of bringing here two images from this century: one is the face of Emiliano Zapata; the other is an Indigenous girl, her face partially hidden by a red bandana. Later I will talk about these two images again.
I have in my hands a calendar that was made in the Spanish State. For the month of November it has exactly the following two images: the image of Zapata and the image of the girl. Although the Mexican government does everything possible to deny something so obvious, for us it is not so much about proving that there is a war in the Indian lands of the Mexican southeast, but rather about understanding the reason for the continuation of this war. This war, which began on January 1, 1994, should have ended when the first San Andrés Accords were signed and the dialogue process seemed definitively on track towards peace. That the war continues, even though it could have ended in a dignified and exemplary way, has its reasons.
Between the satellite and the microscope: The restructuring of war
According to our conception, there are several constants in the so-called world wars, be it the First World War, the Second, or what we call the Third and the Fourth.
One of these constants is the conquest of territories and their reorganization. If you consult a world map, you will see that at the end of any world war there were changes, not only in the conquest of territories but in the forms of organization. After the First World War there is a new world map, after the Second World War there is another world map.
At the end of what we dare to call the “Third World War” and what others call the “Cold War,” there was a conquest of territories and a reorganization. Broadly speaking, World War III can be located at the end of the 1980s with the collapse of the socialist camp of the Soviet Union and at the beginning of the 1990s. Since then, what’s come into view is what we call the Fourth World War.
Another constant in world wars is the destruction of the enemy. This is the case of Nazism in the Second World War and, in the Third, of everything that was known as the U.S.S.R. and the socialist camp as an option against the capitalist world.
The third constant is the administration of the conquest. At the moment when the conquest of territories is achieved, it is necessary to manage them in a way that brings profits to the force that won. We use the term “conquest” a lot because we are experts in this, the States that were previously called national have always tried to conquer the Indian peoples.
Despite these constants, there are a series of variables that change from one world war to another: the strategy, the actors (that is, the contending parties), the weapons used and, finally, the tactics. Although these change, the constants are manifested and can be applied to understand one war or another.
The Third World War, or Cold War, spans from 1946 (or, if you want, from the Hiroshima bomb in 1945) to 1985–1990. It is a great world war made up of many local wars. As in all the others, at the end there is a conquest of territories that destroys an enemy. Immediately afterwards, we move on to the administration of the conquest, and the territories are reorganized. In this world war there were as actors or contenders: one, the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union with their relative satellites; two, most European countries; three, Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia and Oceania. The peripheral countries revolved around the U.S. or the U.S.S.R., as it suited them. After the superpowers and the peripherals there were the spectators and the victims, that is, the rest of the world. The two superpowers did not always fight head-on. They often did it through other countries. While the large industrialized nations joined one of the two blocs, the rest of the countries and the population appeared as spectators or victims. What characterized this war was: one) the arms race; and two) local wars. With nuclear war, the two superpowers competed to see how many times they could destroy the world. The way to convince the enemy was to present him with a very large force. At the same time, local wars were taking place everywhere in which the two superpowers were involved.
The result was, as we all know, the defeat and destruction of the U.S.S.R., and the victory of the United States, around which the vast majority of countries are united today. This is when what we call the “Fourth World War” strikes.
Here a problem arises. The product of the previous war was to be a unipolar world—a single nation that dominates a world where there are no rivals—but it turns out that, to become effective, this unipolar world has to reach what is known as “globalization.” We must conceive of the world as a great territory conquered with an enemy destroyed. It is necessary to manage this new world and therefore globalize it. Then we turn to computing, which, in the development of humanity, is as important as the invention of the steam engine. Computing allows us to be anywhere simultaneously; there are no more borders, temporal or geographical limitations. It is thanks to information technology that the globalization process begins. Separations, differences, Nation-States are eroded and the world becomes what is also called, plausibly, the global village. The whole world like a village with many little houses.
The theoretical conception that underlies globalization is what we call “neoliberalism,” a new religion that will allow the process to take place. With this Fourth World War, once again, territories are conquered, enemies are destroyed and the conquest of these territories is administered.
The problem is what territories are conquered and reorganized and who is the enemy. Since the previous enemy has disappeared, we say that now the enemy is humanity. The Fourth World War is destroying humanity to the extent that globalization is a universalization of the market, and everything human that opposes the logic of the market is an enemy and must be destroyed. In this sense, we are all the enemy to defeat: Indigenous people, non-Indigenous people, human rights observers, teachers, intellectuals, artists. Anyone who thinks they are free and is not.
This Fourth World War uses what we call “destruction.” Territories are destroyed and depopulated. When war is waged, the territory has to be destroyed, turned into a desert, not out of destructive desire but to rebuild and reorder. What are the main problems that this unipolar world faces in globalizing? The Nation-States, the resistances, the cultures, the forms of relationship of each nation, what makes them different. How is it possible for the village to be global and for everyone to be equal if there are so many differences? When we say that it is necessary to destroy Nation-States and desertify them, it does not mean ending people, but ending people’s ways of being. After destroying you have to rebuild. Rebuild the territories and give them another place, the place determined by the laws of the market. This is what globalization is marking.
The first obstacle is Nation-States: they must be attacked and destroyed. Everything that makes a State “national” must be destroyed: the language, the culture, the economy, its political activities, and its social fabric. If national languages are no longer useful, they must be destroyed and a new language must be promoted. Contrary to what one may think, this is not English, but computer science. All languages must be homologated, translated into computer language, including English. All the cultural aspects that make a Frenchman French, an Italian Italian, a Dane Danish, a Mexican Mexican, must be destroyed because they are barriers that prevent access to the globalized market.
It is no longer a question of making one market for the French and another for the English or Italians. There must be a single market where the same person can consume the same product anywhere in the world and where the same person behaves as a citizen of the world and no longer as a citizen of a Nation-State.
That means that cultural history, the history of tradition, collides with this process and is an enemy of the Fourth World War. This is particularly serious in Europe where there are nations with great traditions. The cultural logics of France, Italy, England, Germany, the Spanish State, etc.— everything that cannot be translated into computer and market terms—are an impediment to this globalization.
Now the goods will circulate through computer channels and everything else must be destroyed or put aside. Nation-States had their own economic structure and what was called “national bourgeoisie” —capitalists with national headquarters and national profits. This can no longer exist: if the economy is decided at a global level, the economic policies of Nation-States that wanted to protect national capital are an enemy that must be defeated. The Free Trade Agreement and the unification of the currency in the European Union, the Euro, are symptoms that the economy is globalizing, although in principle it is a regional globalization, as in the case of Europe. Nation-States build their political relations, but now political relations are no longer useful. I don’t classify them as good or bad; the problem is that these political relationships are an impediment to compliance with the laws of the market. The national political class is old, it no longer works, it has to be changed. Try to remember; try to remember even the name of a single statesman in Europe. You simply can’t. The most important people in Europe of the Euro are people like the president of the Bundesbank, a banker. What he says is what will govern the policies of the different presidents or prime ministers that the countries of Europe suffer from.
If the social fabric is broken, the old relations of solidarity that made coexistence possible in a Nation-State are also broken. Hence, campaigns against homosexuals and lesbians, against migrants, or xenophobia campaigns are encouraged. Everything that previously maintained a certain balance tends to break down when this world war attacks the Nation-State and transforms it into something else.
It is about homogenizing, making everyone equal and hegemonizing a life proposal. It is global life. Your greatest fun should be computing, your work should be computing, your value as a human being should be the number of credit cards, your purchasing capacity, your productive capacity.
The case of academics is very clear. It is no longer worth who has more knowledge or who is wiser; now it matters who produces the most research and in this sense their salaries, their benefits, their place in the university are decided. This has a lot to do with the U.S. model.
However, it happens that this Fourth World War also produces an opposite effect that we call “fragmentation.” In a paradoxical manner, the world is not becoming one but is instead breaking into many pieces. Although it is assumed that the citizen is becoming equal, those who are different emerge as different: the gays and lesbians, the young people, the migrants.
Nation-States function as part of a great State, the State-land-corporation that breaks us into many pieces.
If you look at a world map from this period—the end of the Third World War—and analyze the last eight years, there has been a recomposition, especially in Europe, but not only. Where once there was one nation there are now many nations, the world map has fragmented. This is the paradoxical effect that is occurring because of this Fourth World War. Instead of globalization, the world is fragmented and instead of this mechanism hegemonizing and homogenizing, more and more different ones appear. Globalization and neoliberalism are turning the world into an archipelago. And we must give it a market logic, organize these fragments into a common denominator. “Financial bomb” is what we call it.
At the same time that differences appear, differences multiply. Each young person has their own group, their way of thinking, for example the punks, the skinheads, all those in each country. Now the different ones are not only different, but they multiply their differences and seek their own identity. Evidently, the Fourth World War does not offer them a mirror that allows them to see themselves with a common denominator, but rather it is offering them a broken mirror. Each person chooses the little piece that they get and, with it, their conduct of life. As long as it has control of the archipelago—over human beings, not over territories—the power will not worry too much.
The world is breaking into many pieces, big and small. There are no longer continents in the sense of me being European, African, or American. What the globalization of neoliberalism offers is a network built by financial capital or, if you will, financial power. If there is a crisis at this node, the rest of the network will cushion the effects. But if there is a boom in one country, there is no boom effect in the rest of the countries.
It is then a network that does not work, what they told us was a lie, a lie the size of the world, it is a discourse reiterated by the leaders of Latin America, be it Ménem, Fujimori, Zedillo, or other leaders of proven moral quality.
In reality, the internet has made Nation-States much more vulnerable. It is just destroying them, now due to internal effects. It is of no use for a country to strive to build a balance and its own destiny as a nation. It all depends on what happens in a bank in Japan or what the mafia is doing in Russia or a speculator in Sydney. In one way or another, Nation-States are not saved, they are definitively condemned. When a Nation-State agrees to join this network—because there is no other choice, because it is forced or out of conviction—it signs its death certificate.
In short, what this great market wants to do is turn all these islands not into nations, but into commercial centers. You can go from one country to another and find the same products, there is no longer any difference. In Paris or San Cristóbal de Las Casas one can consume the same thing: if one is in San Cristóbal de Las Casas one can simultaneously be in Paris receiving news. It is the end of Nation-States. And not only: it is the end of the human beings who make them up. What matters is the law of the market, and the law of the market dictates that: how much you produce, how much you are worth, how much you buy, how much you are worth. Dignity, resistance, solidarity are bothersome. Everything that prevents a human being from becoming a producing and purchasing machine is an enemy and must be destroyed. For this reason, we say that this Fourth World War has the human race as its enemy. It does not destroy one physically but it does destroy one as a human being.
Paradoxically, when Nation-States are destroyed, dignity, resistance and solidarity are built anew. There are no stronger, more solid ties than those that exist between different groups: between homosexuals, between lesbians, between young people, between migrants. So, this war also involves attacking those who are different. That is why there are such strong campaigns in Europe and the United States against people who are different, because they are dark-skinned, speak another language, or have another culture. The way to cultivate xenophobia in what remains of Nation-States is to make threats: “these Turkish migrants want to take your job,” “these Mexican migrants come to rape, they come to steal, they come to introduce bad habits.” Nation-States—or what little remains of them—delegate the role of removing these migrants to the new citizens of the world, the computer scientists. And that is where groups like the Ku Klux Klan proliferate, or people of such probity as Berlusconi come to power. Everyone builds their campaign on xenophobia. Hatred towards those who are different, the persecution against anyone who is different is global; but also the resistance of anyone who is different is global. In the face of that aggression, these differences multiply, they solidify. This is how it is, I am not going to rate whether it is good or bad, this is how it is happening.
The war is not only military
In military terms, the Third World War had its logic. It was, first of all, a conventional war, conceived in such a way that I deploy soldiers, you deploy soldiers, we fight, and whoever is left alive wins. This occurred in a specific territory which, in the case of the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, was Europe. From the starting point of conventional war, that is, between armies, a military and arms race became established.
Let’s look at the details a little more. This [displays a rifle], for example, is a semi-automatic weapon and is called AR-15. They made it for the Vietnam conflict and it can be taken apart very easily [takes it apart], that’s it. When they made it, the Americans were thinking of a conventional war scenario, that is, large military contingents facing each other. “We gather a lot of soldiers, we throw them at each other, and in the end someone has to remain.” At the same time, the Warsaw Pact was developing the Kalashnikov automatic rifle commonly called AK-47, a weapon with a high volume of fire at short distances, up to four hundred meters. The Soviet conception involved large waves of troops: they deployed a lot of shooting soldiers, and if they died, a second wave and a third arrived. The one with the most soldiers won. Then, the Americans thought: “the old Garand rifle from World War II is no longer useful. Now we need a weapon that has a lot of fire volume for short ranges.” They brought out the AR-15 and tested it in Vietnam. The problem is that it broke down, it didn’t work. When the Viet Cong attacked, the mechanism remained open and when it was time to fire it “clicked.” And it wasn’t a camera, it was a weapon.
They tried to solve the problem with the M16-A1 model. Here, the catch is in the bullet that is called two different things. One, the civilian .223—a fraction of an inch—can be purchased at any store in the United States. The other, 5.56 millimeters, is for exclusive use by NATO forces. This is a very fast bullet and it has a trap. In war the objective is to ensure that the enemy has casualties, not deaths, and an army considers that it has casualties when a soldier can no longer fight. The Geneva Convention—an agreement to humanize war—prohibits expanding bullets because the expanding bullet enters, and when it enters it destroys more and is much more lethal than a hard-tipped bullet.
“Since the idea is to increase the number of wounded and lower the number of deaths,” they said, “let’s ban expanding bullets.” A shot from a hard bullet leaves you useless, you are already on sick leave, it does not kill you unless it hits a vital point. To comply with the Geneva Convention and cheat, the Americans created the soft-point bullet that, when introduced into the human body, bends and twists. The entrance hole is one size and the exit hole is much larger. This bullet is worse than the expansive one and does not violate the conventions. However, if it hits you in the arm…it blows it off. A 7.62 mm bullet passes through you and leaves you wounded; but this one [shows the .223] destroys you. As if by coincidence, the Mexican government has just purchased 16,000 of these bullets.
That is, weapons were generated for precise scenarios. Let’s assume that they didn’t want to use the nuclear bomb; what did they use? Many soldiers against many soldiers. And thus the conventional war doctrines of NATO and the Warsaw Pact were created.
The second option was a localized nuclear war, a war with nuclear weapons, but only in some parts and not in others. There was an agreement between the two superpowers not to attack each other in their own territories and to fight only in neutral territory. Needless to say, this territory was Europe. That’s where the bombs were going to fall and see who was left alive in Western Europe and what was then called Eastern Europe.
The last option of the Third World War was total nuclear war, which was a big deal, the deal of the century. The logic of nuclear war is that there was no winner, no matter who fired first; no matter how fast he shot, the other man managed to shoot too. The destruction was mutual and, from the beginning, this option was simply renounced. Its character became what in terms of military diplomacy is called “deterrence.” “Deterrence”: you will hear this word a lot: “the federal army is not attacking the Zapatistas, it is ‘deterring’ or ‘containing’ them; So that they will no longer cause mischief, there are now 60 thousand federal soldiers in Chiapas.”
So that the Soviets would not use the nuclear weapon, the US-Americans developed many nuclear weapons, and to prevent them from using the nuclear weapon, the Soviets developed more nuclear weapons and so on. They were called ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) and they were the rockets that went from Russia to the United States and from the United States to Russia. They cost a fortune and now they are no longer useful. There were also other nuclear weapons for local use to be used in Europe in the event of a localized nuclear war.
When this phase began, starting in 1945, there was a liberation war because Europe was divided in two. The military strategy—we are talking about purely military aspects—was as follows: some advanced posts in front of the enemy line, a permanent logistics line and the metropolis, whether called the United States or the Soviet Union. The logistics line supplied the outposts. Large planes that were in the air 24 hours a day, the B-52 Fortaleza, carried the nuclear bombs and never needed to come down. And there were the military pacts. The NATO pact, the Warsaw Pact and SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), which is like NATO of the South Asian countries. The model was put into play in local wars. Everything had a logic and it was logical to fight in Vietnam, which was an agreed scenario. In the role of outposts were local armies or insurgents; In the role of permanent logistics were the clandestine or legal arms sales lines, and in the role of the metropolis, the two superpowers. There was also an agreement on the places where they had to stay as spectators. The clearest examples of these local wars are the dictatorships of Latin America, the conflicts in Asia, particularly Vietnam, and the wars in Africa. Apparently, these had absolutely no logic, since most of the time it was not understood what was happening, but what was happening was part of this conventional war scheme.
In this epoch—and this is important—is when the concept of “total war” is developed: elements that are no longer military enter into military doctrine. For example, in Vietnam, from the Tet Offensive (1968) to the taking of Saigon (1975), the media become a very important battle front. Thus, the idea develops among the military that military power is not enough: It is necessary to incorporate other elements such as the media. And that the enemy can also be attacked with economic measures, with political measures and with diplomacy, which is the game of the United Nations and international organizations. Some countries made maneuvers to obtain condemnations or censures against others, what was called “diplomatic war.”
All these wars followed the logic of dominoes. It sounds ridiculous, but they were like two rivals playing dominoes with the rest of the population. One of the opponents put down a chip, and the other tried to put down theirs to cut them off. It is the logic of that illustrious person called Kissinger, Secretary of State of the US government at the time of Vietnam, who said, “We cannot abandon Vietnam because it would mean handing over the game of dominoes in Southeast Asia to others.” And that’s why they did what they did in Vietnam.
Furthermore, it was about recovering the logic of the Second World War. For the majority of the population, this had had a heroic logic. There is the image of the marines liberating France from the dictatorship, liberating Italy from El Duce, liberating Germany from the Nazis, the Red Army entering everywhere.
Supposedly, the Second War was done to eliminate a danger to all humanity, National Socialism. So, in one way or another, local wars tried to recover the ideology that “we are in defense of the free world;” but now Moscow was playing the role of National Socialism. And, for its part, Moscow did the same: both superpowers tried to use as an argument “democracy” and “the free world” according to each one’s conception of them.
Then comes the Fourth World War that destroys everything that came before because the world is no longer the same and the same strategy cannot be applied. The concept of “total war” is further developed: it is not just a war on all fronts, it is a war that can be anywhere, a totalizing war in which the entire world is at stake. “Total war” means now: at any moment, in any place, under any circumstance.
There is no longer the idea of fighting for a particular place; now the fight can take place anywhere and anytime; there is no longer a logic of escalating the conflict with threats, taking positions and attempts to reposition oneself. A conflict can arise at any time and under any circumstance. It can be an internal problem, it can be a dictator and everything that has been the wars in the last five years, from Kosovo to the Persian Gulf War. Thus the entire military routine of the Cold War is destroyed.
It is not possible to wage war in the Fourth World War using the criteria of the Third because I now have to fight anywhere, I do not know where I am going to have to fight, I don’t even know when, I have to act quickly, and I don’t know what circumstances I will have to carry out this war.
To solve the problem, the military first developed “rapid deployment” warfare. The example would be the Persian Gulf War, a war that means a great accumulation of military force in a short time, a great military action in a short time, the conquest of territories and the withdrawal. The invasion of Panama would be another example of this rapidly deployable force. In fact, there is a NATO contingent called the “rapid deployment force.”
Rapid deployment is a large mass of military force unleashed against the enemy and does not distinguish between a children’s hospital and a chemical weapons factory. This is what happened in Iraq: the smart bombs were quite stupid, they did not discern. But they stayed there because they realized that this is very expensive and it contributes very little. In Iraq they made a full deployment, but there was no conquest of territory. There were the problems of local protests, there were the international human rights observers.
They had to retreat. Vietnam had already taught them that, in these cases, it is not wise to insist. “No, we can’t do this anymore,” they said. Then they moved on to the “force projection” strategy.
“Better than having advanced positions in North American military bases around the world, let’s accumulate a large continental force that, in a matter of hours and days, has the capacity to place military units anywhere in the world.” And in fact, they can put a division of four or five thousand men at the farthest point of the planet in four days, and then more, and more, more and more.
But force projection has the problem of being based on local soldiers, that is, on Unitedstatesian soldiers. They consider that if the conflict is not resolved quickly, the “body bags” begin to arrive, the bags in which the dead are “packed,” as in Vietnam, and that can cause many internal protests in North America or in whatever the country might be.
To avoid these problems, they abandoned the projection of force, making, so to speak, commercial-type calculations. They did not make calculations about the destruction of human power or nature, but rather of the advertising image. Thus, the projection war was abandoned and they moved to a war model with local soldiers, more international support, plus a supranational body. It is no longer just about sending soldiers, but also about fighting through the soldiers who are there, supporting them according to the basis of the conflict, and not using the model of a nation that declares war, but rather a supranational body such as the UN or the NATO. Those who do the dirty work are the local soldiers and those who appear in the news are the Americans and international support. This is the model. Protesting no longer works: it is not a war of the US government; It is a NATO war, and furthermore, NATO is only doing the favor of helping the UN.
All over the world, the restructuring of armies is so that they can face a local conflict with international support under supranational cover and under the guise of humanitarian war. What it is about now is saving the population from genocide, killing them. And that is what happened in Kosovo. Milósevich waged a war against humanity: “if we confront Milósevich we are defending humanity.” It is the argument that the NATO generals used and that brought so many problems to the European left: opposing the NATO bombings meant supporting Milósevich, so it was better to support the NATO bombings. And Milosevich, you know, was armed by the United States.
In the military concept, which is working, the entire world—be it Sri Lanka or any country, the most distant one you can think of—is now the backyard of the metropolis because the globalized world produces simultaneity. And that is the problem: in this globalized world, anything that happens anywhere affects the new international order. The world is no longer the world, it is a village and everything is close. Therefore, the great police officers of the world—and in particular the United States—have the right to intervene anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances.
They can conceive of anything as a threat to their internal security; you can perfectly decide that the Indigenous uprising in Chiapas threatens the internal security of North America or the Tamils in Sri Lanka or whatever you want. Any movement—and not necessarily armed—anywhere can be considered a threat to internal security.
What has happened? That the old strategies and the old conceptions of waging war have collapsed. We will see.
“Theater of operations” is the military term for the place where the war unfolds. In the Third World War, Europe was the theater of operations. Now it’s no longer known where it will erupt, it could be anywhere, it is no longer certain that it will be Europe.
So, military doctrine transitions from what is called “system” to what they call “versatility.” “I have to be ready to do anything at any time. One scheme is no longer enough: now I need many schemes, not only to build a response to certain facts, but to build many military responses to certain facts.” This is where computing comes in. This change makes us go from the systematic, from the square, from the rigid, to the versatile, to what can change from one moment to the next. And that is going to define the entire new military doctrine of the armies, the military bodies and the soldiers. This would be an element of the Fourth World War.
The other would be the move from the “containment strategy” to that of “lengthening,” or “extension”: it is no longer just a matter of conquering a territory, of containing the enemy, now it is a matter of prolonging the conflict to what they call “acts of non-war.” In the case of Chiapas, this has to do with removing and replacing governors and municipal presidents, with human rights, with the media, etc.
The new military concept includes an intensification of the conquest of territory. This means that it is not only necessary to worry about the EZLN and its military force, but also about the Church, non-governmental organizations, international observers, the press, civilians, etc. There are no longer civilians and neutrals. Everyone is part of the conflict. Everything in that theater of operations is part of the conflict, it is the enemy according to its conception.
This implies that national armies are no longer useful because they no longer have to defend Nation-States. If there are no Nation-States, what are they going to defend? In the new doctrine, the national armies begin to play the role of local police. The case of Mexico is very clear: increasingly the Mexican army does police work such as the fight against drug trafficking or this new body against organized crime called the Federal Preventive Police and which is made up of military personnel. It is about the national armies becoming local police in the manner of the American comic: a Super Cop, a Super Police. When the army in the former Yugoslavia is reorganized, it has to become a local police force and NATO is going to be its Super Cop, its great partner in political terms. The star is the supranational entity, in this case NATO or the US Army, and the extras are the local armies.
But national armies were built based on a doctrine of “national security.” If there are enemies or dangers to a nation’s security, its job is to maintain security, sometimes in the face of an external enemy, sometimes in the face of destabilizing internal enemies. This is the doctrine of the Third World War or Cold War. Under these budgets, the national armies developed a national consciousness, which now makes it difficult to turn them into friendly police officers of the Super Police. Then the doctrine of national security must be transformed into “national stability.” The point is no longer to defend the nation. Since the main enemy of national stability is drug trafficking and drug trafficking is international, national armies that operate under the banner of national stability accept international aid or international interference from other countries.
At a global level there is the problem of reorganizing national armies. Now let’s go down to America and from there to Latin America. The process is somewhat the same as that already occurred in Europe and that was seen in the Kosovo war with NATO. In the case of Latin America, there is the Organization of American States, OAS, with the Hemispheric Defense System. According to the idea of the former president of Argentina, Ménem, all Latin American countries are threatened and we need to unite, destroy the national consciousness of the armies and make a single great army under the doctrine of a hemispheric defense system with the argument of drug trafficking. Since what is at stake is versatility, that is, the ability to wage war at any time, in any place and under any circumstances, there are beginning to be trials. The few bastions of national defense that still exist must be destroyed by this hemispheric system.
If in Europe it was Kosovo, in the case of Latin America it is Colombia and Chiapas. How is this hemispheric defense system built? Two ways.
In Colombia, where the threat of drug trafficking exists, the government is asking for everyone’s help: ”We have to intervene because drug trafficking does not only affect Colombia but the entire continent.”
In the case of Chiapas, the concept of total war is applied. Everyone is a part, there are no neutrals, you are either an ally or an enemy. This is how the theater of operations scenario is conceived. If in a war there are two parties in conflict and a corridor in the middle where the civilian population or people who remain neutral are, this corridor becomes increasingly narrower until it disappears. Following this logic, the Mexican government has drawn a line in world society and in Chiapas society to divide between those who are its allies and those who are its enemies.
In the case of Chiapas, the question was why the war didn’t end when it should have ended? The answer is that the EZLN was not the objective to destroy. We don’t even reach the category of enemies. We are nothing more than a nuisance, a nuisance, a mosquito that is just there making a nuisance. What it is trying to destroy are the Indian peoples. This is the objective, that is what must be destroyed, the enemy that must be destroyed and the others who are in favor of them are the obstacles, but they do not care.
For this reason, in all the visits that you are making and are going to make, the government is going to tell you: we have not done anything to the EZLN, because the EZLN is not the enemy. The Indian peoples are the enemy and that is why the blows are directed at them. With the Zapatista Army, we just have to find a way to hit it, it’s not a military danger. Let’s see if they have a price and we can buy them. Let’s see if they betray. The real problem is the Indian peoples. That is why all the rapes and attacks in the last four years—precisely, from 1996 to date—are against the Indigenous population. The most scandalous is Acteal, but Unión Progreso and Chavajeval on June 10, 1998 are also equally cruel.
If the enemy is not the EZLN, why make peace with them? This was the problem that the government faced. Furthermore, peace with the EZLN requires recognition of the true enemy, and they cannot accept this. Therefore, there is no point in signing peace with the EZLN. “If what I want is to destroy the Indian peoples and signing peace with the EZLN means recognizing the Indian peoples, then it is not convenient for me.”
But why did they choose the Indian people as their enemy? Why are they short and dark? Why do they speak very differently? Why don’t they like them? We do not know? Yes we know.
The new conquest
This map shows the two great treaties that divide the world: the Northern Free Trade Agreement and that of the European Union. Here comes the data in world versions, what territory this treaty involves, what population it has, and what the gross domestic product is. This other map refers to oil.
The answer to the question, “Why hasn’t the Chiapas war ended?” It is located on this map. The Mayan World, Guatemala, Belize, Chiapas, parts of Tabasco, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatán, is full of oil and uranium. This is what’s at play. In the process of fragmentation that we have appreciated— turning the whole world into an archipelago—the financial power wants a special nation here.
It is an important point because the military says that the Zapatistas want to create another country, the Mayan Nation. We investigate it. It is a project of international financial capital: to build a new shopping center that has tourism and natural resources. They have everything necessary to make a country out of these three pieces of Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. This is what is at stake in the war in Chiapas.
Apart from being full of oil and uranium, the problem is that it’s full of Indigenous people. And the Indigenous people, in addition to not speaking Spanish, don’t want credit cards, they don’t produce, they dedicate themselves to planting corn, beans, chili, coffee, and it occurs to them to dance with marimba without using the computer. They’re neither consumers nor producers. They’re a lot. And anything surprus can be eliminated. That’s why they do everything possible to stop them from being Indigenous. But they don’t want to leave and they don’t want to stop being Indigenous. What’s more: their struggle is not to take power. They fight to be recognized as Indian peoples, to recognize that they have the right to exist, without becoming others.
The problem is that here, in the territory that is at war, in Zapatista territory, there are the main Indigenous cultures, the languages and the largest oil deposits. There are the seven Indian peoples that participate in the EZLN, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Chol, Zoque, Mam and Mestizos. This is the map of Chiapas: communities with Indigenous populations and with oil, uranium, and precious woods.
These are the ones who must be removed from here because they do not conceive the earth as neoliberalism conceives it. For neoliberalism everything is a commodity, it is sold, it is exploited. And these Indigenous people come to say no, that the earth is the mother, it is the repository of culture, that history lives there and that the dead live there. Pure nonsense that doesn’t fit into any computer and isn’t listed on a stock exchange. And there is no way to convince them to become good, to learn to think well, they just don’t want to. They even took up arms.
This is why—we say—that the Mexican government does not want to make peace: that is because it wants to put an end to this enemy and desertify this territory, then reorganize it and start it up as a large shopping center, a Mall in the Mexican Southeast.
The EZLN supports the Indian peoples and to this extent is also an enemy, but not the main one. It would not be enough to settle with the EZLN, and worse if settling with the EZLN means giving up this territory, because that would mean peace in Chiapas: it would mean giving up the conquest of a territory rich in oil, precious woods and uranium. This is why they didn’t do it and they aren’t going to do it.
The ethnocide machine
The role of the armies.
The first characteristic of the Federal Army in Chiapas is that it is an army of occupation; it is not an army that is in its territory, it is an army that in its disposition, in its morale, and in the way it relates to the rest of the people, realizes that it is in a territory that is foreign to it. The Mexican federal soldier is aware that he is a foreigner. It is the same as the classic occupation armies. Just as, for example, the German army operated in the Second World War, this is how the federal army operates in Indigenous communities.
That’s why they put booby traps around Amador Hernández’s barracks. They are deep holes with sharp stakes and some twigs on top so that when someone steps on them, they fall on the sharp stakes.
It is an army that fears the civilian population because it knows that there is no military position of ours there. So what they are afraid of is children, women, men, the elderly. Of those who shout every day: leave! The fear of being in a foreign land is so big that it behaves like an occupying army. This is the logic, and this is why there are checkpoints and immigration posts. It is as if they entered another country; there are no immigration posts to enter Mexico City. In addition, control of local political power is given to “Croquetas” —as we call him—Albores Guillen, supported by the army, as well as the local municipal presidents.
At the same time, since it cannot present a pleasant image to the communications media, it creates its own communications media, buys journalists, newspapers, television channels, to build the image that it cannot give to itself. And here are the spoils of war.
The federal army is involved in a network to kidnap and sell Indigenous children. Concretly, this occurs, for example, in the Guadalupe Tepeyac hospital. When the Indigenous women go to give birth, they tend to them and depending on the circumstances, they no longer return the child. They don’t give them their child, the child stays. Sometimes they tell them the child died or that they’re not going to give the child to them because they don’t have papers—it is very common not to have papers here. The person in charge of the business has ties to General Cuevas who commands the Guadalupe Tepeyac garrison. There’s a child trafficking network, who knows where it ends. I don’t know how much Zapatista children are worth, but the General must win something for that felony.
Drug trafficking. From January 1994 to February 1995, we were in control of this territory. Planting, traffic, and consumption of drugs were prevented. This means that the landing strips used by drug traffickers as a springboard to the United States were closed and all marijuana or poppy fields were destroyed. Evidently this territory, essential to jump into the most attractive consumer market—that of the United States—had to be reconquered. Of course, the first thing the army does is guarantee that drug trafficking can use the landing strips in the places where it has positions. The cut that the generals take is very large, the military cut.
White slave trafficking. It’s not with white slaves because here they are brown, but it’s about prostitution. The one who manages the prostitutes, that is, the pimp, is the general who provides service to his soldiers, he is the one who organizes the entry of undocumented illegals from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. They are young women who get hooked on prostitution and get them to work with their soldiers. So what he pays the soldier with one hand, the general collects with the other from the prostitute’s hand.
The alcohol stalls. There was no consumption here and now the main positions have the support of the military. Besides, there is a business in promotions and it is very good business to be assigned in Chiapas. Being in Chiapas means earning more salary and having more benefits since they take it into account as an action in combat. That is why it is not convenient for the war to end, because the business ends. The brother of the Secretary of National Defense—General Cervantes—was involved in several of these events nearby in San José la Esperanza and is the head of the Maravilla Tenejapa garrison.
Desertions. There are many desertions in the federal army. We know this because the soldier who deserts always asks for support in the communities to lend him civilian clothing and give him a guide so he can escape, clearing the checkpoints. The fact is that when a soldier deserts, the general does not remove him from the payroll list. Better he continues collecting the salary as if the soldier were there.
The military police. Another element that has drawn attention about the federal army for about two or three years is the appearance of the military police. Before there were only soldiers, now there are military police which means at least two things. One is that acts of insubordination and arrests within the army itself are increasing because the military police are basically an internal security body. The other is that, increasingly, the army is carrying out police duties: where the judicial police—the police that legally should do so— do not come in, the military police come in.
The strategies. The strategy of this occupation army is twofold: the surgical coup and the total coup. The surgical coup means that they have to strike at the head of the EZLN. This blow has to be quick and without civilian casualties. For this task they have the Airborne Groups of Special Forces, GAFE, ready, which have about 90 to 105 soldiers per unit and are a bit like the rangers, that is, the Mexican rambos. There are several in the vicinity of each Aguascalientes or where the Zapatista Command is supposed to appear. It is assumed that at the decided time they act, they retire, and that’s it. The problem here would be the political cost and then what they need is to have everything ready for when they say: “Now is the time.” It is not a decision of days, it can be minutes: “It is now because such and such a thing is happening on such and such a side.” In any case, that is not their main problem since the real enemy is not the EZLN but the Indian peoples. And here the governing concept is that of the total blow. A first part of the military device will function as a plug to seal the area. No one will be able to enter or leave, not international observers, not the press, not civil society, not anything. Then comes the internal blow. So, first the area is closed, with so many soldiers, such a profusion of checkpoints.
Not all forces come into play: some have to close and those who are inside deal the internal blow.
There is an important fact. As we know, at least in the San Quentin barracks they have secret crypts and tunnels built below to take out the missing. It will not be known how many dead or who, or anything. They are going to disappear in the strict sense of the term, buried there. How do we know it? Simply because those who built the barracks were Indigenous. Since some of them were Zapatistas, they told us that they asked the soldiers, “and what is that for?” “Well no, here whoever comes down doesn’t come out, but it’s about not being known.” Apart from the fact that they have a clandestine cemetery below the barracks, crypts and dungeons for interrogations, they have exit tunnels so they can take the corpses up the mountain and they can get out, without so many problems. They are going to deny all this, of course, but let’s see if they accept an internal inspection of their barracks, especially the basements. This is another characteristic of an occupying army: that it has its devices.
Furthermore, this is an army that has to be reorganized because it is an army that still has a lot of the previous doctrine, especially the doctrine of national security and nationalism. Their current structure is what they are going to sacrifice in Chiapas and the result of the war, apart from the destruction of the Indian peoples, is the total discredit of the federal army to force it to restructure. The military does not know it—and if they know it, they are complicit—but what is at stake in this war is their disappearance, the way they are structured now. The discredit of this war will be such that this army that operated these things will have to be redefined and then the new army that neoliberalism and globalization need can be born.
Finally, the Mexican federal army is working in Chiapas for its own destruction, because its nationalist consciousness does not fit with this map. They have sold the military the idea that we want to separate from Mexico and unite with Guatemala and Belize to make a new country. No, the transnationals want this, in fact they are working on this and there is a tourism project called “The Mayan World.” That’s what’s at stake. At the time they are attacking us, the military is promoting this to be achieved and they are promoting their own destruction. I’m not sure if they care, I don’t think so. The top brass are sufficiently immersed in corruption that they are practically selling them their own retirement. “Since we are going to destroy you as an army anyway, what I offer you is your dismissal and a good chunk of money. This slice is Chiapas, make war there. Afterwards you will no longer be useful for anything, but you will have enough to live on.” That’s how it is in high command. In the middle management and among the troops, there is none of this; they are soldiers and they do what they are told.
What is at stake in this great war is that territory that must be conquered and one of the consequences will be the destruction of the Federal Army in its current structure; it will continue to be an army but in a different way. There are rumors that the armed forces are going to be restructured and that starting from Chiapas they want to conceive a U.S. model with a General Command. Currently the army does not function by General Command, but by Zone Command; what they want is to concentrate power—a single command is more versatile—in the Central Command or General Command, they also tell them. In this way, power would be taken away from the heads of the military zone and the heads of the military region, who are the ones who currently have the country divided.
We have data that since 1986, there were approximately 170 thousand troops, including the Army, Air Force, and Navy, and in 1996, three years ago, there were 229 thousand, almost a 50 percent increase. The budget also grew: 44 percent from 1995 to 1996. Furthermore, there is a struggle, that is, a dispute between the weapons: the army and the other weapons. They are called “weapons,” the infantry weapon, the cavalry weapon, the air force weapon, the unit weapon. In each body, the military fights among themselves to see who has the most budget, because the budget is a profit for them, between the Army, the Air Force and the Navy. In this restructuring all these internal struggles are taking place. In addition, we must add American interference. Here I give you some information from the attaché office of the State Department of the United States of America based in the North American embassy in Mexico City, which indicates that in 1995 it had at least two special teams in Chiapas with the approval of the Federal Army.
The problem is not only individual human rights. We are facing a series of cases of violation of human rights of Indigenous peoples. At the time when they want to destroy the Indian peoples, their cultural form and all of this, they are not only attacking the individual—who is not allowed to go to the cornfield, or who is beaten or who is tortured—the human right of a group that wants to live as a group is being attacked and that is not in international law. There are no collective human rights observers.
And here the new model of human rights violation is taking place, according to us.
From this corner of the world, the wars of the 21st century are going to be against those who want to be different. In the face of those who resist disappearing as different, their collective rights will increasingly be attacked, taking care to respect individual human rights. The Mexican government’s ultimate aspiration is to get rid of a group of observers who cannot prove that people are being tortured or beaten. But it is evident that it wants to destroy these Indigenous peoples as peoples, a right no one can claim because this right does not even exist.
The call that we want to make to you, when you speak with those who are going to speak, on your return, whether in your countries or when you meet with the media or with United Nations officials, is to emphasize this that I’m pointing out. What is taking shape in these testimonies that they are gathering is a great violation of the collective human right of the Indigenous Mayan peoples, of their existence as such.
Two photos: Zapata and a girl
And here I return to the photo. This photo is by Emiliano Zapata [shows the calendar]. Well, it is a painting and it represents the face of Emiliano Zapata. You can see his eyes, nose, mouth, mustache; he is well known, and therefore anyone can see Zapata. The great paradox is that any Indigenous peasant looks like Zapata: dark, intense black eyes, you can see them behind many balaclavas. Furthermore, it is an image of the past. Yes, this happened, someone took up arms and also with a very special attitude because what Zapata did was not fight for power. There is the anecdote about when he and Francisco Villa arrive in Mexico City. The presidential chair is empty because they have made the person who was there run, and Villa tells Zapata that he should sit on it and Zapata says no. Villa says yes, but just to see how he feels. He sits on it and gets up, but what Zapata is saying is that the problem is not who is in power, but the relationship between the rulers and the governed. This is the part that we take from Zapata, his relationship with power in the struggle we are carrying out.
The image of the girl is a close-up of another image that is at the beginning: a group of Indigenous women who are shouting with their left fists raised. Behind the girl, there are many women who are not young; they are not old either, but it happens that women become exhausted very quickly in Indigenous communities. The photo represents tomorrow. We do not conceive that the world is going to be different for this girl; we conceive that she is also going to have to fight, and the Zapatistas are a bridge, we are the transmission belt of an inheritance to the other heir who is the one who will follow. How much rebellion there is in this Indigenous girl. She is rebelling as an Indigenous person, as a woman, as a girl, as a human being, and as a worker. In this image all the contradictions are synthesized; all the other and different ones are resolved here. This girl is telling us that she learned to fight and that behind her are those who taught her, the adults. The women you see [it’s indicated] although they would be young in the urban environment, are already grown up because of the work and what they suffer in the Indigenous communities. These women are already elderly, people of old age or judgment, as they call it here. They are the bridge—the ones behind this girl—so she can continue fighting. Not so that the world changes, but so that there continue to be people who fight for it to change.
That is how we conceive it, that is our work, we are Indigenous, we want to live and we want to continue being Indigenous, we are Mexican and we want to continue being so. I know that it is difficult in today’s world, especially in Europe, to talk about nationalism. But if you understand what I tried to tell you, in the case of Mexico and Chiapas, being nationalists, that is, fighting to maintain the national structure, goes against neoliberalism. Which does not mean that it is the same in another part of the world. I know that nationalism in Europe has many fascist connotations, but in Mexico, in Mexico at the end of the 20th century, it is a subversion. The trend here is to make money international, and that defending the concept of nation or opposing these fragmentation projects is to be revolutionary. And this is what we are doing, we oppose that.
Between Zapata and the girl we are, and what we dedicate ourselves to is questioning everything, including ourselves. To question our steps, why armed, why the armed struggle, why everything you have seen here and nothing else. This is also part of our questioning, because we have to reaffirm it with you and recognize it: we are an army, and an army is the most absurd thing there is because it is resorting to the force of a weapon to be right, and a human being who has to resort to a weapon to be right, is not a human being. We do not want the future to be what we have now.
This girl is not going to want the world to be like hers either; she is going to get something else, different. What is she going to be like? We don’t know. Those who arrive then will know how they are going to do it; we think they are going to do it well.
What we do know is that we do not want this current world. We don’t want it and we don’t deserve it and we don’t care how many lies they tell about us, nor how many soldiers attack us, nor how many bombs they want to drop on us; we are not going to let the world continue like this. Whatever we are going to do to make the world change, we are not even concerned about whether we are going to achieve it, we do not even think about whether it may be possible or not, we are sure that we are going to do it.
That is what we are, the bridge between this past and this tomorrow, and it is our turn here in Chiapas. If it had been our turn in Kosovo we would say other things, in Africa, the United States, Italy, Europe, whatever each one is. That’s what we wanted to tell you.
Original Spanish: https://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2003/02/01/cuales-son-las-caracteristicas-fundamentales-de-la-iv-guerra-mundial/