More than 500 indigenous and multiethnic women from 48 municipalities of the State of Chiapas, have come together to analyze on a juridical basis the situation of structural violence and that resulting from the war in which we live since 1994. Throughout this day we have worked on 5 tables: Sexual Violence, domestic violence, war violence, government policy violence, and violence of solicitation and administration of justice.

We have realized that the women from Chiapas, despite belonging to different ethnicities, share the same problems, that together we can struggle against the violence, impunity and the war that during the last 6 years have economically, physically, socially, culturally and morally inflicted on the population, affecting specially the women and our children.

The extreme poverty has placed us on the border between survival and extinction; within this situation the heavier load has been carried by the women since we have to take care of our children, to solve health problems, and to provide education and family security. More and more the women are the main support of the family, since men immigrate to the cities or to the United States seeking resources; this has resulted on a work overload upon us and on a need to enter into the market system on enormously disadvantageous conditions (illiteracy, the fact of not speaking Spanish and the lack of knowledge of market dynamics) which have increased the exploitation we suffer.

The governmental violence have imposed us illegitimate and illegal authorities, have refused us the ethnic and cultural recognition of self-determination, and the hope raised by the San Andres accords in 1996 has been canceled by the intransigence of the federal and state governments. Through governmental institutional charity policies like "Progresa" and "Procampo, which are distributed selectively and with coercive purposes, for example granting medical care services only to those who agree to have birth control measures applied on them, the government has been trying to silence our protest without resolving poverty and generating more divisions within communities. In this way, the government rips apart the social fabric since the polarization generated by the neoliberal system and the counterinsurgency policies penetrate and divide the families and the whole society.

We can state that a judicial system does not exist in Chiapas, specially for women, this besides being intrinsically corrupt. Due to the sexism and racism of those in charge of applying the law, only a few of us feel compelled to denounce. When we manage to do it, instead of following the corresponding processes the authorities sentence punishments which are a mockery to our rights, or force us to go from one office to another without providing us any answer or exhibit us publicly as guilty of the aggressions of which we were target.

The concentration of wealth on the hands of just a few and the increase of poverty which were caused by the neoliberal policies have also aggravated the discrimination of women and the level of social disintegration: increase of alcoholism among men, with serious consequences to women; increase of prostitution which accompanies the military presence in communities; loss of indigenous principles with the imposition of the money culture, the individualism and the violence upon the respect to our ethnic and cultural identities. All this has been reflected by an increase of domestic violence against women and infants. The generation and marital conflicts have been rising causing us pain, sadness, frustration, fear and guilt besides psychologically affecting our children for life. All this affects permanently our physical and mental health and our dignity.

Adding to all of the above there is institutional violence as the government, unable to solve the problems of the population, systematically represses the social movements and has been applying in Chiapas a strategy of low intensity war against the Zapatistas, using as main weapon the terror and the military occupation of the communities which they consider as support basis of the EZLN.

The war has considered women as an important target since the government knows that we are responsible for the social and cultural reproduction of the society. Due to this, the government dedicates special campaigns to control us and to use us to publicize on the media the so called "social labor" activities of the army such as medical care, construction of roads, introduction of drinking water in communities, etc, while these actions have in reality been the beginning of the militarization of the public services which by law must be provided by civil institutions.

The military occupation of roads, water sources and even of the communities has increased. There has been a widespread penetration of military intelligence agents into communities in order to directly control the population. The number of soldiers in the State is over 70 thousand; their presence disables the free transit of the population, puts obstacles on the everyday life of the communities, impedes the communication and the achievement of consensus agreements on the communal assemblies. The construction of military encampments on communal lands without permission of the inhabitants is in fact an illegal occupation which is accompanied by the contamination of natural resources, ecological deterioration and the profanation of hills, lakes and rivers which the indigenous peoples consider sacred places. The soldiers sexually assail women and rape them as part of the counterinsurgent strategy of terror.

The indigenous women from Chiapas, as those from Central America, have become a target of war. The strategists of the low intensity war think that our bowels "only bread guerrilla soldiers" and perpetrate "exemplary" extermination actions against those who are most vulnerable, with the objective that the terror freezes the population, as it happened in Acteal.

On this international day against violence towards women, we have made our voices of indigenous and multiethnic women to be heard; we courageously gave our testimony about the war and the damage it has caused in our everyday lives, in our families and in our communities. We cannot separate our personal life from that of our village. We no longer believe the government because it has taken the military to the communities, supports the paramilitary, intends to silence us with crumbs of money and does not follow up on its word. We also insistently point out that we have already opened our eyes, we have already woke up and we want our rights to be respected. We have analyzed our internal problems of family violence, and our differences in what concerns the traditions that affect women. We have agreed that we are committed to join efforts and to face them collectively, which is difficult due to the army's blockade and the continuous provocations from those who sympathize with the PRI (government party). We are aware that the war is killing us, even among brothers and sisters, and that death also reaches our families by ways of alcoholism and the sexual transmitted diseases which have intensified as part of the violence and prostitution which the army has brought.

In this meeting, upon the violence, the impunity and the war which we live in Chiapas, we have agreed to demand:

• The recognition of our rights and our identity as indigenous and multiethnic women.
• The end of the violence against us within our homes and families as well as on the street and on all public spaces in which we participate.
• The end of the extermination war, of the counterinsurgent policies and of the military occupation of our villages and communities.
• The recognition as a public crime of the physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women and the consequent punishment of these crimes.
• The elimination of the traditions and traditional practices which violate our human rights.
• The compliment of the San Andres accords as an indispensable condition to achieve peace.
• The recognition of the rights we have as people to self-determination, to control our natural resources and to decide the ways of governing ourselves and to make our own decisions.
• That the state and federal government cease their neoliberal policies which have brought us to extreme poverty, specially women, and have seriously deteriorated the living conditions of the population and originated a significant increase of social violence.
• That the different instances responsible for the administration and solicitation of justice apply the laws fairly, without sexism nor partiality against women.
• That the government respect the international accords concerning women rights that it has signed.

We have agreed to seek ways to defend our violated rights, which were presented and analyzed here with the help of 8 invited jurists and human rights defenders, aiming that justice can be done on our cases and that a state of right can be established on our country. We will present a petition for the intervention of the Interamerican Human Rights Commission and select the cases which require the services of the Interamerican Human Rights Court. We will also insist before the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to have her direct technical cooperation.

In this meeting we have agreed as women to join our strength to the Worldwide March against poverty and violence that the women from around the world will carry out in the year 2000, and to keep on struggling until achieving peace and respect for our right to live with dignity and to build a world based on solidarity and on the human sense of existence.

San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas,
November 25th, 1999.