The Spectre of suicide stalks San Andrés
Laura Castellanos
El Universal 04/01/2014
Studies reveal that cultural changes in the region have created a problem: the priista youth, “lacking re-signification of what it means to be indigenous”, are taking their own lives
LOS ALTOS, Chiapas – Tzotzil youths with denim trousers, long-sleeved shirts, and leather jackets wander around by the kiosk of San Andrés Larráinzar. The majority are preparatory-school students, but some cattle-breeders also come. This is the day for an afternoon stroll: as such, they dress with an urban, modern look.
A young man makes a comment about the topic that has captured the town’s attention in recent days: “Since about three or four months ago, two or three people each month have committed suicide; they hang themselves or fling themselves into the river.”
Larráinzar is known for being the location of the negotiations of the San Andrés Accords, signed by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the federal government in 1996, but in the days prior to the 20th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising, a new subject dominates the conversations here: the frequent suicide of the indigenous youth.
After the uprising that demanded equality and justice for indigenous peoples, Larráinzar was divided into two sectors: those that choose to be bound by Zapatista rules, and those that obey the mandate of the institutional authority (priistas), always led by a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
In front of the kiosk, outside the autonomous municipal presidency, are Tzotzil Zapatistas with their faces uncovered, wearing their traditional palm-leaf hats with coloured ribbons attached to the rim. 100 metres from them, the priistas are working in the office of the municipal presidency.
The proportion of suicides, nonetheless, is not the same for both groups: the majority of those who take their own lives are priistas.
Marcos Arana, a researcher at the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition, co-author of the unpublished study “Suicide among indigenous youths in San Andrés Larráinzar,” research for which took place from 2009 to 2011, documented 23 cases of suicide, only two of which were women, of people between 12 and 22 years of age. All turned to hanging themselves under the influence of alcohol.
The most revealing aspect of the study is that, of these 23 cases of suicide, 22 were of priistas, whilst only one was of a Zapatista who had suffered serious health problems.
Arana’s research signals that “among Zapatista youth there is a re-signification of what it means to be indigenous, a re-valuation of their culture, their language, their sense of collectivity, which is something that has not happened in other groups of youths”.
The expert in nutritional science asserts that “Zapatista resistance” has also seen great advances in primary medical care. In 2005, Arana took part in research into “The situation of the right to healthcare in Chiapas”, in which mother-infant health in 46 different communities was studied: 20 pro-government, 6 Zapatista, and 20 divided.
The results surprised him greatly: Zapatista communities have better indicators of health than pro-government communities. This is the case in infant malnutrition (18% to the latter’s 21%), vaccinations (84% to the latter’s 75%), tuberculosis (32% to the latter’s 81%) and death during childbirth (six cases for the pro-government communities, compared to zero cases for the Zapatista ones).
“Health in all rural communities in the country would improve hugely if this experience of attention to the communal; the participatory; the preventative were replicated as it occurs in Zapatista communities”, the scientist reasons.
He refers to the fact that the EZLN rejects all types of government programme. From amongst their own ranks, the Zapatistas have educated health representatives at a primary level, and created four regional hospitals with their own operating rooms in comparatively remote areas, as well as dozens of municipal clinics. In Zapatista communities, decisions for the common good are made collectively.
Ongoing Phenomenon
The doctor of anthropology says that it’s no coincidence that the 23 youths who committed suicide were students, nor that in eight cases, unwanted pregnancies were involved.
Nonetheless, Arana emphasizes that many cases may have gone unreported, as suicide is a taboo subject. In fact, in the figures of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) no youth suicide is registered for 2009 or 2010.
The researcher explains the phenomenon: he considers that the Zapatista uprising of 1994, the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), globalization and the dismantling of the countryside provoked sudden cultural changes in towns like Larráinzar.
Although in this community the transition between infancy and adulthood was traditionally made comparatively suddenly, through agricultural work or marriage, now public investment in schools at intermediate and advanced levels has made it possible for new generations to experience adolescence for the first time.
The school became the space for encounter and interaction between genders that previously had been lacking, and began to awaken students’ sexualities without their previous social and family frames of reference. Further, students were opened up to a consumerist and racist society, which started to provoke frustrations.
On the other hand, the EZLN, after the rejection of the San Andrés Accords in the National Congress by all political parties in 2001, broke all ties with the government and created their own autonomous system, with its programmes for health, justice, and education, such that recent generations do not attend official state-run schools.
Furthermore, alcohol is banned in Zapatista communities. As such, their autonomy turned out to be formative, and sheltered Zapatista youths from the social changes suffered by priista youth. “The Zapatista youths are less vulnerable to the frustrations associated with switching on the television, which dictates ‘you are what you consume’, and they had support to confront a new situation regarding the opposite gender”, says Arana.
Another piece of research, “Suicide in the indigenous world: the case of indigenous youth in Los Altos, Chiapas”, carried out by the researcher Jorge Magaña of the Autonomous University of Chiapas, found that in Larráinzar and in 10 other municipalities of the Los Altos region, there is an average of six attempted suicides per month among the indigenous youth.
From October 2012 to April 2013, Magaña interviewed 290 secondary- and middle-school students from government schools in six municipalities, among them Larráinzar. From a group of 152 male students, he found that 38 attempted suicide, whilst from a group of 138 female students, the number was as high as 51.
Susana is dead
On the evening of October 4th, 2013, Susana Hernández, daughter of the Tzotzil Manual Hernández, who had been the municipal president and priista representative of San Juan Chamula after the Zapatista uprising, entered the Womens’ Hospital in San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas in order to give birth.
Susana had been sent there by her local clinic, and was accompanied by her mother-in-law, a monolingual Tzotzil speaker. Both were wearing traditional dress.
The husband of the young woman recounts that the nurses tore off her rings and earrings, throwing them to the floor. They left her naked for 30 minutes in the sight of hospital staff, and they threw out her mother-in-law because she did not speak Spanish. They denied information and access to Susana to the entire family.
A short time later, they informed her husband Romeo Pérez that the caesarean section had been successful, that he was now the father of a baby girl. They also told him that they had removed Susana’s gallbladder, but did not explain why.
Five hours later, hospital doctor Francisco Lara told him that his wife had suffered health complications and had died.
“Susana arrived at the hospital on foot, she was well, and then they hand her back to me dead, it’s something difficult to believe or to accept”, says an indignant Romeo.
For the doctor Héctor Sánchez, from the Maternal Mortality Watchdog in Chiapas, Susana’s death was due to “negligence, poor quality of medical attention, and discrimination”.
Sánchez, a researcher from the College of the Southern Border, says that this case reveals how, at 20 years since the Zapatista rebellion, neither the quality of life nor the treatment of the indigenous population in Chiapas has sufficiently improved.
“One of the motives for the 1994 uprising was to avoid these types of cases”, he points out.
A decade ago, one out of every four women in Chiapas who died during pregnancy, birth, or the post-natal period was indigenous, “now it is one out of every two”, this expert comments.
According to INEGI records, in 1994 there were 92 cases of maternal death in Chiapas, the seventh-most of any state nationally; in 2012 there were 70 cases, and the state fell to 10th place. Sánchez says that deaths are under-registered and that in reality Chiapas occupies 4th place nationwide.
The way of autonomy
Sánchez and Arana carried out the study “The situation of the right to healthcare in Chiapas” in order to evaluate how the armed conflict in 1994 and the militarization of regions with a Zapatista presence in Los Altos, the jungle and the northern regions impacted the health of the populations of these areas.
Arana states: “And this is after 10 years of an enormous, clientelist public investment that formed part of a counter-insurgency strategy, which has made no impact at all in terms of improvement of living conditions, not even in pro-government communities”.
The researchers collected data from 17,931 individuals from 2,997 homes. They found that among the priista and zapatista populations, the former presented with greater infant malnutrition (21.1%) and stunted growth (52%) than those that were “in resistance” (17.7% and 48.6% respectively).
In the complete vaccination scheme 74.8% of children from pro-government communities registered, but this was bettered by the Zapatista children, at 84.2%.
Regarding the rate of pulmonary tuberculosis, out of every 100,000 inhabitants, there were estimated to be 81.1 cases in pro-government communities, and 31.7 cases in autonomous zones.
Eight cases of maternal death were documented, six from pro-government communities, and two from divided communities.
As we entered the Caracol of La Garrucha to be received by the Zapatista Good Government Council (JBG), for instance, we saw the Comandanta Ramona Clinic for reproductive and sexual health, constructed in 2008 with international support. And in the Caracol of Oventik, a Tzotzil woman told us: “In the clinic we get health checks for ourselves and for our children”.
Arana concludes: “In Zapatista communities, health problems are problems for everybody; in priista communities they’re a problem for the government, and in the divided communities, for no-one”, which is why the latter had the worst health outcomes of all communities.
He mentions that in 2005, in cases of medical emergency, the EZLN had strategies “to use public health services without jeopardizing their position of resistance”. Nonetheless, the organization informs us in a 2013 video that these services no longer want to receive Zapatistas, and ask them for official documentation, which they tend to lack. For this reason, the Zapatistas have had to construct their own regional hospitals.
Arana highlights the lesson of the Zapatista experience: “It is more important that a community has the capacity to organize, identify the problems it faces and mobilize than whether or not it has a clinic, doctors or medicine”.
The EZLN says in this video that since 2004 they have had a hospital with an operating room in La Realidad, in which 130 surgical operations have been carried out. They also have a pharmacy, ultrasound and dental attention. In 1994, they would never have thought this possible.
Translated by Andrew Green
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dorset chiapas solidarity 
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