Many of us marveled at the way the rocky dirt path to Oventic was transformed as the Mexican government tightened its military grip on Zapatista communities. Like cockroaches, huge muddy trucks filled with asphalt, gravel, cement suddenly overran the muddy path. Like turtles, bulldozers, asphalt spreaders and planers clambered over the mounds of red earth. Suddenly a paved road emerged from chaos.
The fact was however that long before the mechanical cockroaches and turtles appeared, hundreds of indigenous feet had traipsed back and forth in the darkness of clandestinity. They quietly constructed a wall of defense against a future of annihilation.
As civilians arrive from all over Mexico and the world, and the storm of debate intensifies around the possible departure of the Zapatistas from the jungle, the same indigenous feet once again cut a new path. This time, however, the path cuts through human history as well as the green mountains of Chiapas.
The Zapatistas have turned the tables once again on a dictatorship determined to maintain its grip on power at any cost. In an inane attempt to keep the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the government issues direct threats and strident accusations and hands the limelight back to the Zapatistas. What can the government do? If it uses force against hundreds of unarmed civilians protecting a Zapatista delegation, it will create an international scandal. If the government unilaterally breaks off the dialogue by arresting the Zapatista delegates, it willreveal its profound fear of their political proposal, and elevate their already heroic status.
The government is now fenced in by the Zapatistas. Meanwhile everyone has lost count of the number of convoys, tanks and soldiers deployed to their villages. Five or six security forces submit indigenous travelers to abusive searches and foreigners fight the deportation of the immigration services.
The Mexican government would have us believe that they hold the upper hand because of their death machines. "Is this the final crisis?" I was asked by someone as I left the States for Chiapas. "I mean are the Zapatistas going to be able to get out of this one?"
If "this one" is death, it has been their only companion for 500 years. Their ability to leave this political and military juncture, however, has never depended solely on them.
It depends on us. Those of us outside the military blockade have difficulty grasping the importance of our presence on this path. We are overwhelmed by the power of propaganda. We have somehow forgotten that no government can rule without the consent of its people.
What is at stake in the struggle of the Zapatistas is an alternative approach to the prolonged combat which has wracked the Third World. It is a moral force which disables all previous forms of power. It is the distant glimmer of an alternative to this global system of exploitation.
The crisis will be final only if we fail to mobilize. Given what is at stake, can we really afford to stand still?