Zapatista women at La Garrucha

To celebrate the 14th anniversary of their New Years Day uprising, Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) hosted a Women's Encuentro ("encounter" or "meeting") at the jungle settlement of La Garrucha, Chiapas state. Officially dubbed the "Encuentro of the Indigenous Zapatista Women with the Women of the World," the meeting brought together women from throughout Mexico and several other countries around the globe. In a case of self-conscious role reversal, men at the gathering were confined to cooking and cleaning, while women did all the talking. Accounts and images are online at Chiapas IMC.

Meanwhile, Hermann Bellinghausen reports for La Jornada Jan. 2 on further attacks against Zapatista support bases by followers of the ironically-named Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), which the EZLN charges is a paramilitary group. On Dec. 29, Zapatista supporter Pablo Silvano Jiménez was shot and wounded by an OPDDIC gunman apparently backed up by Chaipas state police officers in the community of Betel Yochiv, near the settlement of Agua Clara. On Dec. 27, Zapatista supporter Julio Hernández Gómez was attacked with machetes by OPDDIC militants at Cascadas de Agua Azul.

See our last posts on Mexico and the struggle in Chiapas.