The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) is a political-military organization, formed mainly by indigenous people from the Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chol, Tojolabal and Mam groups of the State of Chiapas, whose existence was publicly known on January 1, 1994 as a result of of the armed uprising by which it took the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas and the towns of Las Margaritas, Altamirano, Chanal, Ocosingo, Oxchuc, Huixtán, Chalam, Simojovel and San Andrés Larráinzar.

The Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle was the first public document of the EZLN; it invoked article 39 of the Constitution and declared war on the federal Army, designated as the "basic pillar of the dictatorship [...] monopolized by the party in power and headed by the federal executive that today holds its maximum and illegitimate boss, Carlos Salinas de Gortari ".

The origins of the EZLN go back to the early 1980s when a small guerrilla group - made up of mestizos and indigenous people - settled in the mountainous area of ​​the Lacandon Jungle with the intention of creating a front that would promote the armed struggle in the country. According to internal documents of the organization, "the EZLN was created to conquer national liberation and our second independence through armed struggle, and it will not suspend the struggle until a socialist political, economic and social regime is established in our homeland. ".

This group had its origin in the guerrilla struggle that proliferated in Mexico since the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s.

Its main social base is found in the indigenous municipalities of the region of Las Cañadas, Los Altos and the northern part of Chiapas. A considerable number of its commanders are indigenous and, at least since 1993, the military apparatus has been subordinate to a council of delegates from the Zapatista communities called the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CCRI).

The existence of a mestizo leader, Subcomandante Marcos, has led many to insist that the EZLN leadership is made up of urban mestizos, and even foreigners, who have manipulated a group of isolated, ignorant and extremely poor indigenous people to lead to run your own program.

These theses, in addition to being contemptuous of indigenous peoples, ignore the fact that long before the arrival in Chiapas of the founders of the EZLN, the indigenous populations of La Selva and Los Altos had been protagonists of social movements and had a high degree of political organization.

The guerrilla nucleus that settled in the Jungle found a politicized indigenous society with experience in social mobilization that had sought in different ways to organize to solve its problems.

The weight of indigenous demands in the EZLN's program and discourse became more evident after the truce decreed by the government and seconded by the Zapatistas, on January 12. With the establishment of the dialogue tables between the federal government and the Zapatistas, a process began to reach a solution that would lead to peace and the establishment of a new relationship between the State and the indigenous peoples of the country. In this sense, the indigenous character of the EZLN was reinforced, since in the negotiations with the federal government, the Zapatistas acted as representatives of the national indigenous movement by incorporating the claims and proposals contained in the programs of the various organizations in the country.

After the failure of the dialogue between both sides, the government of Ernesto Zedillo responded with a new military offensive that included the release of arrest warrants against EZLN leaders and harassment against the indigenous Zapatista communities.

The measures adopted by the government had to be partially reversed due to the response of Mexican society, which rejected a violent solution to the conflict and demonstrated in favor of dialogue and peace through marches and mobilizations throughout the country and the intense international pressure that was expressed through the formation of solidarity organizations with the Zapatista movement in various countries of America and Europe, mainly.

The history of the EZLN is complex and has been marked by transformations, fractures, and reformulations throughout its twenty-year existence. It is possible to distinguish a first moment in the life of the organization, when the militants coming from the cities encountered the indigenous world, which did not conform to the ideological conceptions of the precursors of the armed movement, and they were forced to make good changes. part of his thesis on social change and the logic of armed struggle. The second moment is the consolidation of a project that proposed to the indigenous and peasants of Chiapas the struggle for national liberation and the proposal to establish a socialist model of the nation; The third moment, product of the uprising on January 1, has to do with a rethinking of the objectives and purposes of the EZLN that implied giving a central role to indigenous demands, the struggle for autonomy, the questioning of neoliberal capitalism and the mobilization for a new democracy that recognizes the plurality of societies and the right of each community to choose its own way of governing itself.

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