EZLN

“ Understanding well the gullible man who has accepted the sad mission of being the instrument for enslaving a free people: his vacillating throne does not rest on the free will of the nation, but rather on the blood and cadavers of thousands of Mexicans who have been sacrificed without reason and only because they defend their freedom and their rights. ”

“ The indigenous question will not have a solution if there is not a RADICAL transformation of the national pact. The only means of incorporating, with justice and dignity, the indigenous of the Nation, is to recognize the characteristics of their own social, political and cultural organization. Autonomy is not separation; it is integration of the most humble and forgotten minorities of contemporary Mexico. ”

“ The electoral process of August 1994 is a State crime. They should be judged as criminals and held responsible for this mockery.
On the other side, gradualism and hesitation appear in the lines of the opposition who accept a perception of this great fraud as a series of small "irregularities". A great dilemma in the struggle for democracy in Mexico reappears: the civic struggle bets upon a transition "without pain", a final blow which will light the road to democracy, and only prolongs the agony.
The case of Chiapas is only one of the consequences of this political system. ”

“ The present polarization in southeastern Mexico is the responsibility of the government and demonstrates its incapacity to resolve, at their roots, the political and social problems of Mexico. Through corruption and repression they try to resolve a problem that can only be solved when the legitimate triumph of the will of the people of Chiapas is recognized. ”

“ We call upon all social and political forces of the country, to all honest Mexicans, to all of those who struggle for the democratization of the national reality, to form a NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT, including the National Democratic Convention and ALL forces, without distinction by religious creed, race or political ideology, who are against the system of the State party. ”

“ Waiting for signs of the government's willingness to accept a political, just and dignified solution to the conflict, the EZLN watched, powerlessly, as the best sons and daughters of the dignity of Chiapas were assassinated, jailed and threatened. The EZLN watched as their indigenous brothers in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chihuahua and Veracruz were repressed and received mockery as an answer to their demands for a solution to their living conditions. ”

“ The economic, political, social and repressive program of neo-liberalism has demonstrated its inefficiency, its deceptions, and the cruel injustice that is its essence. Neoliberalism as a doctrine and as a reality should be flung into the trash heap of national history. ”

“ In the National Democratic Convention the EZLN sought a civic and peaceful force. One which, without opposing the electoral process, would also not consumed by it, and that would seek new forms of struggle which would include more democratic sectors in Mexico as well as linking itself with democratic movements in other parts of the world. August 21 ended the illusions of an immediate change through peaceful means. An electoral process that is corrupt, immoral, unfair and illegitimate culminated in a new mockery of the good will of the citizens. ”

“ This National Liberation Movement will struggle from a common accord, by all means, at all levels, for the installation of a transitional government, a new constitutional body, a new constitution, and the destruction of the system of the Party- State. We call upon the National Democratic Convention and citizen Cuahtemoc Cardenas Solorzano to head up this National Liberation Movement, as a broad opposition front. ”

“ The re-orientation of the national economic program, putting aside lies and deceptions, and favoring the most dispossessed sectors in the country, the workers and the peasants, who are the principal producers of the wealth that others appropriate. ”

“ This is how the EZLN understood the issue since its founding, and this is how the indigenous communities who make up the leadership of our organization have defined it.
Today we repeat: OUR STRUGGLE IS NATIONAL We have been criticized for asking for too much. We, the Zapatistas, it is said, should be satisfied with the handouts that the bad government offers us. Those who are willing to die for a just and legitimate cause have the right to ask for everything. We Zapatistas are willing to give up the only thing we have, life, to demand democracy, liberty and justice for all Mexicans. ”

“ Meanwhile the Revolutionary Institutional Party, the political arm of organized crime and drug traffickers, went into its most acute phase of decomposition, by resorting to assassination as the method of solving its internal conflicts. ”