Lacanja Tzeltal’s current land crisis is the product of a history of faulty governmental practices of land distribution in the Lacandon Jungle.  In 1972, 614,000 hectares of land were given to only 66 families of the Lacandon tribe by presidential decree, making them one of the largest landholding groups in the state.  The decree officially recognized the Lacandones as the true descendants of the original habitants of the jungle, although their origins are widely disputed, and made them one of the largest landholding groups in the state.  The existence of 47 other communities – consisting of approximately 4,000 Chol, Tzeltal, and Tzotzil people, all indigenous peoples of Mayan descent - already living in this area of the jungle was completely disregarded in the decree.  Instead, it effectively established only one rightful landholder, the Lacandones, with whom to bargain for the purchasing (at a low price) of the jungle’s natural resources, primarily, at the time, its precious woods.  Today, the area is targeted by multinationals seeking access to its water, petroleum, natural gases and amazingly diverse flora and fauna.

The Lacanja Tzeltal community is, relatively speaking, one of the fortunate communities; their ejido (land held in common) has been legalized and is recognized as an established community within the Lacandon Region of the jungle.  However, the community has outgrown the land available to them, a problem which is at the root of much of the tension and conflicts throughout the state of Chiapas.  Therefore, 52 of the children of the original Lacanja Tzeltal ejidatarios (landholders in an ejido) have resettled on land around their parents’ – land which officially belongs to the Lacandones - and have been working to legalize the expansion for 25 years with little success.  In the meantime, the families face the constant tension of living on land that legally belongs to others and the resulting threat of being forcefully evicted.

It is within this context that four engineers comissioned by the state office of Agrarian Reform and 25 presumed Lacandones arrived unannounced at the Lacanja Tzeltal extension two weeks ago and began to measure the land but instead found themselves detained by representatives of the local communities.  Additional state officials arrived the next day, ending the stalemate by signing a document affirming that they would work towards the legalization of the settlements.  They followed up the next week with an additional visit and the promise of delivering the documents needed to regularize the status of the communities.  Following years of little response from the federal and state governments, the local authorities are encouraged by their current success, but reserve doubts about the likelihood of adequate follow-through.  In addition, they’re aware that this success is limited, that a long-lasting solution to the land disputes in the area would require a redrawing of the barriers of the Lacandon Region, more reflective of the actual size of the Lacondon tribe, which would allow for the many others in the area to live peacefully on their own land, a topic which has yet to be approached by officials. 

Aside from their tentative success with the state officials, what is remarkable about this confrontation is the coming together of members of communities of many different affiliations.  The Lacandon Jungle, for many years the destination of migrants from other parts of the state and southeastern Mexico, is home to many ethnic groups, political parties and religions, differences which have been exploited by government policies characterized by a divide-and-conquer strategy, with the aim of squelching rebellion (the jungle was the cradle of the EZLN uprising in 1994 and still claims a vibrant Zapatista presence) and privatizing land for the exploitation of its natural resources by multinational corporations.  In the face of this external pressure, the diverse members of these 23 different communities, including among them Zapatistas, PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) and PRD (Partido Revolucionario Democratico) members, as well as Catholics, Presbyterians and Pentecostals, have formed an agreement to stand together in defense of their lands and their dignity.  In the words of the authorities of the Lacanja Tzeltal community, “they tried to divide us by giving the land to the Lacandon people...but even if they come to kill us, we’re not going to move...we all feel this way.”