To: Professor Jacqueline Nolan-Haley
From: Julia Amanda Garza Benitez
Course: International and Interethnic Conflict Resolution
Date: April 26, 2010
Subject: Zapatista Army for the National Liberation
INTRODUCTION
The Zapatista Army for the National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, hereinafter “EZLN” or “Zapatistas”), surprised Mexico and the world on the wake of January 1, 1994. On that date, “a group of 300 Indian men and women “slipped out of the Lacandon jungle” of eastern Chiapas and “marched into the center of San Cristóbal de las Casas… In a matter of hours, close to 2,000 rebels took over more than 500 ranches and six more towns in eastern and central Chiapas ...”[1] The EZLN was in fact calling for a national war against the government and actually identified itself as a belligerent group under the Geneva Conventions on the Law of War[2]. Two days later, the Mexican government responded by sending the army to fight the insurrection.
Despite that episode of violence, however, both the EZLN and the Government, for their own, separate motives and interests[3], soon realized that the best course of action was to bring the conflict to the negotiation table.
Due to restrictions on length, this short paper will discuss the events in the conflict in very general terms and will later attempt to point to some of the legal, political and negotiation issues that the conflict raises.