MAYA RESIST BIG OIL
TURMOIL IN TABASCO
By Bill Weinberg

THE ZAPATISTA movement in Chiapas, Mexico—which began with a dramatic New Year’s 1994 uprising on the day that NAFRA took effect-has won attention both from the international media and the U.S. solidarity movement. But grassroots campesino and Indian struggles for land and autonomy are spreading throughout the Mexican South, away from both the media spotlight and the attention of U.S. activists. One site of such conflict is the lush fields and wetlands of Tabasco, just north of Chiapas on Mexico’s Gulf Coast— the heartland of both the Chontal Maya people and the Mexican oil industry.

As Pemex, the Mexican state oil monopoly, has speeded up operations to meet foreign debt payments—including those for Washington’s $20 billion bailout of the crippled peso—accidents and corner-cutting have sparked a Chontal movement for Pemex accountability. The past two years have seen blockades of the Pemex wells by hundreds of Indians, campesinos and fishermen. The Mexican government has responded by militarizing the state of Tabasco.

Aulderico Hernandez Geronimo is a Chontal from the town of Nacajuca and a federal senator with the left opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution, which has played a leading role in the protests. In addition to demanding Pemex accountability to the indigenous communities in which it operates, the PRD is challenging the local regime of Roberto Madrazo, Tabasco’s governor from Mexico’s long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party.

At a rally in the main square of Tabasco’s capital Villahermosa s past Jan. 13, Hernandez told the crowd of assembled campesinos and Indians, "The Madrazo government is completely corrupt and illegitimate. It gained power through electoral fraud and is violating constitutional rights. It dominates the news media, buys votes, and now must face the conscience of the people in defense of their rights and economy, their hunger for justice and respect for constitutional order. We must build a civil resistance movement throughout the state of Tabasco." The Mexican federal government is investigating Madrazo on fraud and money-laundering charges, but few Tabasco activists expect the charges to go anywhere.

Protesting Contamination
The Villahermosa rally was part !of a campaign of daily protests that began Jan. 1 to demand the release of the 35 political prisoners being held statewide, mostly Indian, campesino and PRD leaders arrested at oil wells on "riot" or "sabotage" charges. "The charges are practically invented," says Raymundo Sauri of Villahermosa’s Santo Tomás Ecological Association, pointing out that the movement adheres to principles of nonviolence.

The Coordinadora de Lucha Social, representing campesinos and fishermen whose lands and waters have been contaminated, has been in dialogue with Pemex and the federal government since February 1996.

In 1990, Tabasco small farmers and fishermen denounced Pemex before Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights. In 1992, the commission issued Recommendation 100/92, noting:

"In the...coastal zone, of the state of Tabasco, Pemex...has introduced channels for carrying chemical products which have not conformed to minimum efforts to avoid severe ecological damage... In some cases, lands dedicated to agriculture have been affected irreversibly. Nearly 800 [communal and small holders’] hectares have been totally destroyed with hydrocarbon residues. The damage has affected subterranean waterways, and domestic wells in the affected zone only produce salt water and are contaminated with hydrocarbons. Diverse species of fish have been extinguished or are in danger of disappearing...gastrointestinal illnesses have severely affected the young population of the region and have caused the death of some children, predominantly due to consumption of contaminated water…"

Recommendation 100/92 called upon Pemex and Tabasco’s government to repair the damages caused to the lands, or indemnify the communal- and small-property owners whose lands are affected by the oil wells and complicated network of pipelines stretching throughout Tabasco and terminating at the port of Dos Bocas. Thousands of reclamation demands were honored, but Pemex now faces 63,000 demands from fishermen and campesinos who claim their lands are damaged. Of those, Pemex has recognized only 6,000.

Stolen Payments
Raymundo Sauri asserts that even the money that Pemex and the government did pay often didn’t really benefit those who work the land and waters. "The money was robbed," he says. "There’s no other word. At least half of the money went to buy votes, buy local leaders—the usual PRI game. We want accountability for that money."

The Santo Tomás Ecological Association calls for creation of a Center of Public Access to information on all petrol activities in Tabasco and a Committee of Civil Vigilance to monitor Pemex, with democratic representation by all the affected groups.

In February of last year, thousands of campesinos and fishermen blockaded oil wells throughout Tabasco to demand action on the 57,000 outstanding claims. The army and federal police were called in, protesters were menaced by helicopters and attacked with swinging clubs. Among those whose heads were bloodied was Andres Manuel Lopez Obredor, the local PRD militant who claims his gubernatorial bid was stolen through fraud and was subsequently elected national leader of the party. More than a hundred were arrested—some of whom are still in prison.

Drawing inspiration from Chiapas’ Zapatistas, many Chontal communities are emphasizing their indigenous autonomy and challenging the government’s right to exploit oil on their land. Says Mercedes Gordillo, representative from Nacajuca to the Coordinadora de Lucha Social, "Our municipio gets nothing from the oil. Madrazo and his friends get the benefits. The social benefits don’t reach us. There is only misery for us from the oil. Our land doesn’t produce like it did before the oil. There are fewer fish in the river."

In Nacajuca, where the Chontal struggle is strongest, a permanent camp has been established at the oilfields by the Base de Operaciones Mixtal, coordinating federal police and army troops. Locals protest the use of the army in civilian law enforcement as unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, Chontal fishermen go back and forth in hand-carved cayucas along the waterways through the Pemex oilfields outside Nacajuca. Egrets and herons pass overhead. Pemex bulldozers and tank trucks-and army troop trucks-go back and forth on the roads.

Stealth Privatization
Lurking in the background of this struggle is the pending privatization of Pemex, a potent symbol of national pride since President Lazaro Cárdenas had the foreign oil operations nationalized in 1938. With telecommunications, rail lines, television networks and other state industries already privatized under NAFTA, Pemex is the most precious. plum remaining to fall into corporate hands. Pumping out three million barrels a day, Mexico is the world’s fourth largest oil producer, and Tabasco is the country’s most productive region. Eighty percent of Mexico’s oil exports go the United States. Foreign companies like Shell and Exxon are already providing technical assistance in Pemex exploratory work and Pemex profits were until recently being delivered directly to the U.S. Federal Reserve as collateral on the $20 billion peso bailout.

Some charge that a sort of "stealth privatization" has already begun. Observes Silvia Whizar of the Santo Tomás Ecological Association, "The Mexican petrol industry is controlled by the demands of the U.S. economy’s need for oil. The velocity of exploitation is an obligation mandated by the bailout accords. There is no interest in protecting the ecology."

The PRD opposes privatization. Insists Hernandez, "First the government tries to resolve the ecological and social problems, unemployment, people abandoning. ‘their land because it doesn’t produce. Before this, we cannot even begin to talk about privatization."

Francisco Castillo is a dissident Pemex worker who works with the Alianza Civica (which organized last year’s Zapatista "consulta," a national vote on which direction the revolutionary movement should take). Castillo claims that the oil workers’ movement was largely destroyed in a purge of the union ostensibly aimed at cleaning up corruption. The notorious leader of the Petrol Workers Syndicate of the Mexican Republic, Joaquin Hernandez (known as La Quina—the Boss), was arrested in 1989 on the orders of then-President Carlos Salinas.

Castillo says wryly, "La Quina was very corrupt, but he had the nationalist spirit. Since he was ousted the union is much weaker. It obeys the government unconditionally."

He adds that among the hundreds o workers sacked following La Quina’s arrest were dissident leaders who had opposed La Quina. Six ex-Pemex workers are now among Tabasco’s political prisoners. They were arrested at protests or denied benefits and severance pay; one such protest occupied Pemex’s Villahermosa offices in November of 1996. "Some of the dissidents were among the best workers at the wells," Castillo says. "Many of them were technical workers too."

Under the new contract worked out in the wake of the purge, technical workers can now no longer be part of the union. Ten thousand Pemex workers marched from Villahermosa to Mexico City in 1990 to protest the changes. But Sebastian Guzmán Cabrera, who replaced La Quina, accepted the change to the union contract.

The ‘Petrol Mafia’
"The union movement was killed," concludes Castillo. "It was all worked out by Salinas and the petrol mafia."

With the workers’ movement in decline, the Indian, campesino and fishing communities are now on the frontline of the struggle.

Hector Sanchez de La Cruz, a PRD leader and veteran Pemex worker, is from the Chontal village of Simon Sarlat. His family is among many demanding indemnification from Pemex for degradation of their ancestral lands. "Before Pemex came, we were poor, but we could eat," observes Sanchez. "We were poor because we had no money, but we had maize, frijol (beans), yucca, pescado (fish), tortuga (turtle). Now the turtles are all gone. There isn’t one left. There are still fish, but few and small."

Simon Sarlat is on the border of La Centla Biosphere Reserve, a vast area of wetlands at the confluence of the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers. La Centla, the most remote area of Tabasco, teems with bird and aquatic life. U.N.-recognized biosphere reserves are supposed to protect areas of high biodiversity while incorporating traditional indigenous ways of life. But Pemex actually has numerous oil and gas wells within the borders of La Centla reserve. The Chontal who live and fish within the reserve—the most marginal people in Tabasco—claim that Pemex’s dredging of La Centla’s canals to accommodate equipment is leading to siltation of the waters and declining fish populations.

An oil pipeline on Simon Sarlat’s communal lands ruptured in December, spilling oil into the water for ten hours. The Chontal blockaded the oilfield for one week following, shutting down worker access to the wells.

The San Francisco-based Global Exchange organized a delegation to Tabasco following 1996’s February protests. But many U.S. activists involved in Chiapas solidarity efforts know nothing about the struggle just to the north in Tabasco. Citizens’ groups fighting new oil rigs on the super-developed U.S. Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas also have little contact with the movement in Tabasco, directly across the Gulf from New Orleans. The challenge of forging these links points to the work that is yet to be done in building an effective transnational solidarity against the transnational corporate regime of NAFIA.

For more information on the efforts of the Chontal Maya to preserve their environment, contact: Santo Tomás Associación Ecologica, Castillo 905-3, Col. Centro CP 86000, Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico.

[War Resisters League Website] [Nonviolent Activist Index]
May-June 1997: [Editorials: Disarm Police] [Turmoil in Tabasco: Maya vs. Big Oil] [A Day without the Pentagon] [Youthpeace Meets Toymakers] [Activist News] [Activist Reviews: Women in Media]

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