NEWSLETTER

interview by bernardo loyola

The EZLN opens the doors of the IMSS supermarket to the people.

Marco Antonio Cruz, the director of Imagen Latina, an independent photo agency based in Mexico City, spent a few weeks in December of last year, 1993, taking portraits of blind people in the mountains of Chiapas, the southernmost and poorest state in Mexico, for an ongoing project he had been working on. Right before Christmas, he went home to Mexico City to spend the holidays with his family. After partying on New Year’s Eve into 1994, he went to bed only to be woken up at 7 AM by one of his photographer friends, who told him that in Chiapas, right where he’d been just a few days before, a guerrilla group had declared war on the Mexican government early that morning—the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) started. He immediately packed his bags and headed to the airport.

Vice: What was your first reaction to the fact that an army of indigenous people wearing ski masks had declared war on the Mexican government?
Marco Antonio Cruz: I was incredibly surprised when I heard how the Zapatista Army of National Liberation [EZLN] had taken a few of the municipalities, both in the rain forest and in the mountain regions of the state. Everybody was surprised. It was one of the most important moments for the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari because NAFTA was starting that day. According to him, the country was about to enter a new economic phase.

Yeah, we were about to leave the third world to enter the club of the developed nations. Salinas was at the beach partying with a glass of champagne when he heard the news about the Zapatistas.
It was a huge hit for the president. The government and the army were taken by surprise. I was in Chiapas just a week before the uprising and I didn’t hear anything about it! It was incredible how secretive they were. I have lots of journalist friends in Chiapas and they didn’t know anything about it either.

You were one of the first journalists to cover the uprising. When did you get there?
As soon as I heard about what was going on, I went straight to the airport. The only airline that flies from Mexico City to Chiapas had canceled all the flights for security reasons, because nobody really know how bad things were down there. A bunch of journalists from the national daily newspapers ended up gathering at the airport, and we put pressure on the airline to open one flight to take us there. Finally they did, and I flew with a group of about 12 Mexican journalists, mostly photographers, to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas. We rented cars and immediately took off to San Cristóbal de las Casas, where the first actions by the guerrillas happened. By the time we were on the road, it was already dark and the road was blocked by trees. A bunch of us had worked as photojournalists covering the guerrillas in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and from our experience we knew it wasn’t safe to keep going in darkness, so we went back to Tuxtla and then drove back at sunrise. We found an alternative route and we finally got to San Cristóbal. By the time we got there, the Zapatista Army had already left. We took photographs of the offices in the government building. They were completely ransacked. The Zapatistas had opened a small supermarket, and people were taking everything they could. There was also a lot of graffiti on the walls around town.

What did the graffiti say?
They left messages saying that they had left San Cristóbal to attack the Rancho Nuevo army base, so we headed over there. The base was a few miles outside San Cristóbal on the way to Ocosingo. Before getting to the base, we saw a white VW Beetle driving in reverse toward us. The driver, who we later learned was a local journalist, told us to stay away, because there was an insane shoot-out going on over there. When he said, “Don’t go there,” we took it as an invitation! We were very lucky not to get hit when we arrived. The army base is right on the side of the road, and we saw the soldiers in the trenches, crouching and telling us to move away. They could have shot us.

What kind of weapons were they using against the Zapatistas?
Machine guns.

And the Zapatistas?
We couldn’t really see the Zapatistas because they were hiding in the forest, behind the trees. We saw an army car get shot and I took photos of a helicopter and a Hummer coming to get the wounded soldiers. It was the first time in my life that I took photos of the Mexican Army firing guns.

We rarely see the Mexican Army in action.
It was something unheard-of. Our generation of photojournalists was too young to cover the Mexican guerrillas of the 70s like La Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre. All we knew was that back then, the army attacked with all they had and annihilated the guerrillas. That was our only reference for what we were witnessing, but we never thought we would see something like it in Mexico again.

---

See all articles by this contributor

Comments

Anonymous, on Nov 2, 2009 wrote: The Zapatista’s are fucking pansies. All show, no go. Get back to us when they actually do something.
Anonymous, on Nov 2, 2009 wrote: ross perot looks like he has progeria
Anonymous, on Nov 2, 2009 wrote: Seems that baby food isn’t high on the list of shit to steal when the walls come down. What about the babies, people? ¡Viva la resistiance!
	The Host, on Nov 2, 2009 wrote: Isn’t that what Mexican supermarkets look like anyway?
Anonymous, on Oct 22, 2009 wrote: Ross Perot’s vision of Nafta? Huh? He warned against it, if I recall.
Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2009 wrote: well everyone knows mexico is in the toilet.
Anonymous, on Oct 14, 2009 wrote: thats a really good winter burglar mask. I dig it
Anonymous, on Oct 12, 2009 wrote: mexican gangsters just always look so cool, unmatching outfits and all.
Anonymous, on Oct 12, 2009 wrote: that last picture is disturbing.
Anonymous, on Oct 12, 2009 wrote: fifteen years later and mexico is still fucked. ross perot’s vision of nafta didn’t quite come to fruition did it?