Pair Get Close To Foreign Conflicts
Acalanes High School graduates travel to Chiapas in Mexico and Guatemala as part of a peace mission.
Celeste Ward,
Staff Writer
Friday, September 3, 1999
LAFAYETTE–Instead of relaxing and taking it easy, Acalanes High School graduates Ellen Love and Charlie Eaton spent part of their summer vacation traveling with a group of activists in the troubled southern Mexican state of Chiapas and in Guatemala.
"It was a completely different atmosphere," said Love, 17, who returned recently from Latin America as part of a peace mission. "You feel like you're being watched. It makes you appreciate the freedom we have here."
Love and Eaton, 18, both of Lafayette, were the youngest people in the 20-member delegation.
The delegation visited Mexico and Guatemala from Aug. 14 to 29 to oppose the U.S. Army's School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga. The school trains Latin American soldiers and military personnel in counterinsurgency, infantry tactics, military intelligence and anti-narcotics and commando operations.
The delegation had no idea that its trip to Chiapas would come at a time of renewed conflict between the Mexican government and the Zapatista rebels. Tensions have been growing since the Mexican government began work on a road deep in the Lacandon jungle, near La Realidad.
Zapatistas say the road is meant to allow more troops into the region; Chiapas state officials say it will help poor farmers get coffee and bananas out of the jungle.
The village is controlled by the Zapatista rebels. Since the Zapatista offensive temporarily captured several Chiapas cities in January 1994, more than 500 people have died in the conflict. The Zapatistas are demanding land reform and greater autonomy for the Indians in the region.
On Aug. 23, the Zapatistas held anti-government marches, with crowds of up to 10,000 people in three Chiapas cities.
Being in Chiapas around that time was "pretty tense," said Eaton. He recalled that the delegation thought it was being spied on after the group's leader, Jess Hunter, was put on a Mexican list of troublemakers.
There was a "huge anti-foreigner atmosphere" in Chiapas, Love said. But she was glad she went.
"It gave a human side and tangible side of what I want to change," she said. "These people are living in a militarized place with a lot of fear."
Eaton added, "There is a lot of fear, but also a lot of hope. You get a very clear vision of what they are struggling for."
Eaton and Love said their strongest impressions in Guatemala came on a visit to Ximbaxuc, a village in Quiche, where in 1981, soldiers killed and tortured dozens of people as they burned the village.
The delegation hiked to the village, passing burned-out homes covered by years of jungle growth.
"You see this community that had once been there, but the land has taken it back," Eaton said. "The people are trying to have a healing process and rebuild."
The students' work against the School of the Americas began Jan. 30 at St. Stephen's Catholic Church in Walnut Creek, when they attended a speech by the Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who founded SOA Watch in 1990. The group holds vigils, fasts and demonstrations to call for the closing of the school.
Eaton and Love are no strangers to political activism. In January, the two picketed Chevron's San Francisco headquarters to protest human rights violations in Nigeria.
They both said they will continue their activism as college freshmen. Eaton, who revived a dormant Amnesty International group at Acalanes High School last year, is now studying political science at New York University. Love is taking Latin American studies at Brown University.
"Our next step is making a true commitment to taking what we learned and getting information out," Eaton said.
