IV329 - March 2001

Seven years ago, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas began. On Sunday March 10th they concluded their march "for indigenous dignity" in Mexico City, where they are to open negotiations with the government of the new president, Vicente Fox.

The Fourth International reaffirms its solidarity with the struggle of the EZLN, its March and its demands, and also salutes the Indigenous National Congress which is currently meeting.

Saturday, March 11, 2001, before a triumphal arrival in Mexico City the next day, Zapatista leader, Subcommander Marcos met with a French delegation composed of José Bové, Bernard Cassen and Danielle Mitterrand.

On Sunday, March 10, 2001 after having covered 3,500 kilometres, the Zapatista march ended with a rally of several hundred thousand people in Mexico City. It amounted to a veritable transformation of the political situation.

There’s no doubt about it. The winds have changed and the horizon is clearing. Only a few years ago, when the neo-liberal counterrevolution was at the height of its arrogance, a World Social Forum of such a magnitude and impact would have been unthinkable.

No repressive brutality. No riot gas. Neither blows nor arrests as in the mountainous Swiss bunker. Porto Alegre, on the contrary, was a multicolour fiesta of an insolent, chaotic, resistant plurality. Everything was permitted.

Social forces from around the world have gathered here at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Unions and NGOs, movements and organizations, intellectuals and artists, together we are building a great alliance to create a new society, different from the dominant logic wherein the free-market and money are considered the only measure of worth.

The agreement signed between Ecuador’s President Noboa and the powerful National Confederation of Indigenous peoples of Ecuador (Conaie) on February 7, 2000 represents a new victory. In the course of three years, the radical mobilization of the peasant-indigenous movement, alongside the popular urban sectors, has overthrown two neo-liberal governments, divided the Armed Forces, and won a popular plebiscite against dollarisation of the economy and the payment of the foreign debt.

The 16th party congress of the KKE (CPG - Communist Party of Greece), still by far the biggest left political force of the country, took place on Dec 14-17, 2000. The CPG, taking advantage of the outrage about the bombings of Yugoslavia by NATO, got 8.7% of the vote in the Euro-elections in 1999 and 5.5% in the national elections in 2000, roughly maintaining its position.

Less than two years after the first elections to Holyrood, Scottish politics has undergone a sea change. With a British general election on the horizon in a few weeks or months, Alan McCombes looks at present and probable future developments.