Doing accompaniment work with the Zapatistas in Mexico led me to do accompaniment work in Grand Rapids

It is now 31 years since the Zapatistas revealed themselves to the world in the southern state of Mexico, known as Chiapas.

The Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN) chose January 1st, 1994, since that was the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began in Canada, US and Mexico. The Zapatistas condemned this trade agreement, even going so far as to call it a death sentence for campesinos and indigenous people. 

I had been through Chiapas numerous times before the uprising in 1994. After the uprising in Chiapas, I did travel through in 1994 on my way to be an election observer in El Salvador, then again in 1995, where I was doing accompaniment work in Guatemala with several human rights groups, along with documenting election violations in the Quiche region of Guatemala. 

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The first time I did accompaniment work in Chiapas, specifically in the Zapatista communities, was in 1997, in the community of La Realidad. La Realidad is located in the Lacandon forest area, so it took about 4 hours to get there. I had to catch a ride in a cattle truck at 2am, so as to avoid Mexican government authorities, since traveling to Zapatista communities was prohibited at that time.

I was in La Realidid for for several weeks doing accompaniment work, where we mostly documented the daily activity of the Mexican military, which drove through La Realidad every day in order to intimidate them. Those of us would also monitor helicopter activity by the Mexican military, which used US supplied Huey helicopters. The same day that I left La Realidad, paramilitary forces in Mexico murdered 45 campesinos in Acteal, Chiapas, which was less than 30 miles from La Realidid.

I went to Chiapas a second time to do accompaniment work, but this time a whole group of people from Grand Rapids came. I was working at the Institute for Global Education at the time and was teaching a class on the history of US/Mexican relations. Several members of the class decided to make the trip to Chiapas with me. 

This trip, which was in 1998, led us to the Zapatista community of Oventic. Again, we were in this community during the annual New Year’s even celebration, to commemorate the EZLN uprising. 

My 3rd, and last time doing accompaniment work in Chiapas, was in late 2000, through the first days of 2021. During that short stint of accompaniment, several communities from the area marched to a Mexican military base and occupied the base until they left. Check out the video clip of this action, along with one of the Comandantes reading a statement during the New Years Eve celebration. 

I am forever grateful for the opportunity to learn from the Zapatistas and to be able to leverage my privilege by doing accompaniment work in Chiapas. I continue to practice accompaniment work here in Grand Rapids, whether it is with Indigenous people, Black community organizers or the undocumented immigrant movement known as Movimiento Cosecha GR. La Lucha Sigue!!!!