COHA has received a good deal of feedback from our readership concerning the press memorandum entitled “Zapatistas Issue a General Red Alert: Resurfacing Unwanted Memories in Mexico.” Numerous questions, many highly legitimate, have been raised concerning the journalistic integrity of the article as well as the validity of certain claims made by its author, who has since resigned from the organization. At the same time, a small portion of the reaction, including a considerable segment of a rant published by the online journal Narco News, has been characterized by unwarranted and in the case of Narco News, outlandish accusations (to read Narco News's original response go to: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/7/141948/2292). After spending a considerable amount of time reviewing the criticisms that have arisen since the article’s release, COHA hopes through this open letter to clear the air with a thorough and balanced response. But keep in mind that because COHA is a high productivity organization that is almost all volunteer in its staff make-up, that it has had to work very hard to maintain a high level of accuracy. To achieve this, various mechanisms meant to catch errant facts or distorted interpretation, flawed analysis must be established and severely followed. Also, it would be fair to say that COHA is an unabashedly liberal research group that has a very long history of being an advocate of the Zapatista cause and a harsh critic of the Mexican central government. Our website will convincingly support this claim.

COHA acknowledges that the academic rigor of the piece under review was compromised by several sections in which the author confused facts and at times presented unsubstantiated hypotheses as reasoned arguments. This refers specifically to the statement that it was in March when the Mexican armed forces announced the destruction of marihuana plants within the EZLN-influenced area, as well as the related argument that the reversal of this statement “most likely came out of fear of the General Red Alert’s possible destabilizing consequences on Mexico’s present political and economic status quo.” As several readers have made clear, and as the facts indeed show, the Mexican government retracted the statement that was first made in June. It was revoked not in response to the Red Alert but because it was false; the Mexican government simply had its geography wrong. In addition, our former researcher’s speculation, “If the situation does not change in the near future, the tensions will mount until confrontations with the Zapatista fighters become inevitable, offsetting Fox’s persistent efforts to make Mexico a stable and safe environment for investors,” admittedly lacks the evidentiary support to justify its prima facie presence in the piece, but it still was, and is, a conceivable option.

Concerning the “suspicious origins” of the EZLN, COHA recognizes that the argument that Raúl Salinas and other self-defaming Mexican politicians may have had a hand in the origins of the EZLN is a convoluted one, based on a series of speculative relationships. In defense of the article and our former colleague, an attempt to illustrate the tenuousness of this line of reasoning was clearly made. As was widely acknowledged by our readership, the final line of the section – “All of these [associations] are allegations, not established facts” – serves well to cast a shadow of doubt over the argument. That said, COHA should not have placed so much faith in the Proceso article that appeared to substantiate its unlikely conclusions, nor should it have given credence to such a far fetched theory, especially one which has been previously discredited by reputable sources.

Nevertheless, some of the criticism directed at COHA’s Zapatista piece is unwarranted. For example, Narco News analyst Al Giordano’s insinuation that the release belies COHA’s malicious bigotry toward Mexico’s indigenous population relies on a highly selective and mean-spirited interpretation of the piece, which we have experienced before. We happen to enjoy reading Narco News, but we have found its editor to be a noisy and intemperate fellow who doesn’t quite realize that COHA is not the enemy, but a friend to most of the causes of that organization. For example, Giordano writes,

People have always pushed Zapatista conspiracy theories that ‘someone must be behind those damn Indians.’ It is, essentially, a form of racism, one that believes that ‘the indigenous obviously could not organize themselves into such a potent force’ and therefore, by extension, there must be some white shadowy figure behind them.

Giordano is asserting that COHA’s researcher was part of this camp. Admittedly, there are instances in the piece where Lozano’s word choice can be construed to convey a slightly dismissive attitude toward the Zapatista movement. As one reader responded, “That the [Zapatista] forces are indigenous is sufficient to make them ‘makeshift.’ That indigenous people dare comment on the politics of the nation to which they belong and of which they are highly critical is seen as their ‘playing politics.’ Calling Marcos an astute political figure as though it were an accusation – of course that is precisely what he is.” In each of these cases, however, the accusation of underhanded racism is based on an unfair assumption of Lozano’s motive. The Zapatista forces are referred to as ‘makeshift’ not because the piece aims to undermine their legitimacy, but because ‘makeshift’ seems a reasonable way to describe a guerrilla militia that is not a professional army. That the EZLN is described as ‘playing politics’ and Marcos is labeled a shrewd politico is less derogatory than in line with the working popular perception of the Zapatista movement.

Moreover, it is baseless indeed to argue, as Giordano does, that COHA is racist because it merely mentions the allegations that connect Raúl Salinas to the EZLN. It never said that they were true, only that they had been made. It would be fair to say that the admittedly implausible allegations have little justification to be in the article due to their intrinsic shortcomings and insufficient scholarly integrity, but to equate COHA’s intellectual hiccup with calculated bigotry necessitates a hugely wrongful assumption of motive and a gross invalidation of COHA’s 30 year history and the organization’s well earned bona fides as a major force against the White House’s hemispheric transgressions. To so accuse is to commit unwarranted offense to an organization that ill deserves it. In keeping with COHA’s tradition of collective responsibility, and because at one point he had read a draft of the article, COHA Director Larry Birns joins his colleagues in accepting responsibility for the piece and those places where it misfired.

Most disturbing, however, is the Narconews accusation that our Zapatista piece calls for “a violent permanent solution in the war of extinction against Mexico’s indigenous community.” Nonsense! This is a shameless and slanderous as well as a blatant distortion of the article’s thesis, made even clearer by Giordano’s truly unacceptable manipulation of the piece’s content. He quotes the article as follows:

“If the situation does not change in the near future, the tensions will mount until confrontations with the Zapatista fighters become inevitable, offsetting Fox’s persistent efforts to make Mexico a stable and safe environment for investors… Fox may even conclude that an armed encounter with the Zapatistas might be a good thing for his image as well as for his legacy, once he steps down. Fellow Mexicans might be prepared to say (according to Fox’s way of thinking), that the president was willing to preserve Mexico’s sovereignty and cohesiveness at any cost.” He then continues quoting, “…if Mexico wants to be perceived internationally as a country that is prepared to compete against economic heavyweights China and India in international trade, it will need to resolve the EZLN issue with dispatch.”

From this, he extrapolates that COHA’s Lozano is quietly advocating state violence against the Zapatistas. This is entirely disingenuous. Lozano does not propose such a plan of action, but to the contrary, speculates that “Fox may even conclude” that it is a viable option. He does not suggest that Mexicans would embrace such a policy, but says that this might be the case “according to Fox’s way of thinking.” Clearly, Lozano is not pushing an agenda here; he is simply postulating about what Mexico’s president might be thinking.

Still, what is most lamentable and revealing about Giordano’s argument is what he decided to leave out of it. While picking and choosing lines to construct his sclerotic analysis, Giordano conveniently omitted a key sentence. After hypothesizing that Fox may believe that the Mexican public would accept a confrontational policy, Lozano makes clear that there are better options at hand. He writes, “However, developments this week may point to a more open dialogue between the Zapatistas and the federal government, presenting the EZLN [with] the possibility of participating in Mexico’s political life as an official political party.” By excluding this sentence, Giordano basely skewers Lozano’s words to suggest malice, falsely equating Mexico’s need to “resolve the EZLN issue with dispatch,” with a transparent call for state-sponsored genocide. As a fair reading of the entire text would illustrate, Lozano clearly believes that a peaceful resolution to the recent conflict is possible and desirable; the outlandish accusation that COHA advocates genocide in Mexico is an outrageous tormenting of language.

With regard to the upholding of academic and journalistic integrity, COHA strives to hold itself to the highest of standards. As such, COHA recognizes that in the rare case when an article or a press release fails to live up to those expectations, it is the organization’s responsibility to own up to its shortcomings and derelictions. There is no doubt that aspects of the Zapatista press release were flawed, and COHA takes full responsibility for those mistakes of fact and interpretation. For many hours, COHA has reflected on how this lapse in academic rigor went unnoticed, and is taking vigorous steps to ensure that our future issuances maintain the high level of quality its readership has come to expect. COHA would like to thank all of those who took the time to engage in this productive exchange and means to ensure its readers that the truth and the enlargement of exercisable democratic options for the entire hemisphere remain at the forefront of our public discourse and institutional efforts.