It was December 1993/January 1994 and the Fackney family - Sandy, Mike, Kerry (10), Jasmine (7) - were backpack travelling through Mexico. About two weeks into the trip, while in Oaxaca, I was listening to the BBC World Service news on my shortwave transistor radio, (no mobile phones or readily available internet!) and heard that there had been a rural indigenous uprising in the southern state of Chiapas, coordinated by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), after they had declared war on the Mexican state on that day - 1 January 1994! This was the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force, which the Zapatistas believed would threaten native communal landholdings and their livelihood. The uprising, by an estimated 3000 armed insurgents, resulted in the occupation of several towns and battles against government forces. Unfortunately, this was the very area we were heading!
Two days later, we reached Tuxtla Gutierrez (Chiapas’ state capital) where there was a fairly heavy military presence, including sandbags and machine gun posts on the outskirts of the city. While taking a sightseeing boat ride up a nearby canyon we also had military helicopters flying past. Not surprisingly, we learnt that the authorities had closed the road going east, through the occupied area, which was about 60 km away from Tuxtla Gutierrez. This was the road we had planned to take, so now we would have to travel north and circle around the area. So that evening I booked the next day’s bus. Once back at our hotel I listened to the BBC news. The lead story reported that the Zapatistas had broken through the military line and were a mere 20 kilometres from us!
The next day, about 15 minutes into our trip, the bus was stopped by the army. All men had to get off the bus, with all non-foreigners having to ‘spread eagle’ against the side of the bus for frisk searches. There were several other security stops that day, (and two for punctures!). At one of the security stops the militia personnel harshly questioned a local man on the bus, including asking him to recite the Mexican national anthem. This was probably because the Mexican authorities were erroneously blaming insurgents from neighbouring countries for the uprising. Armed clashes finally ceased on 12 January, after a peace deal was brokered by the Catholic diocese in the area.
When initially planning our trip to Mexico we had wanted to have a four day ‘R & R’ stop-over in Los Angeles after visiting Mexico, however, due to flight difficulties we had our four day LA stop-over on the way to Mexico, which we weren’t happy about. However, all else equal, had we achieved our original plan, we would have been in the centre of the Zapatista uprising on 1st January! Not only that, but after visiting Mexico we would have been in Los Angeles four days earlier - just in time for the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake on 17 January, centred 31 km northwest of downtown LA, killing 57, and injuring more than 8700. And the worst of all, for the kids, Disneyland would have been closed! As it was, we were able to see some of the damage the earthquake caused during the 8 or so hours we had in LA.
I think there is a moral to this story, but I’ll let others decide what it is!