Guillermo Michel
- Then, with ownership secure, each one of them
- attracts to his domain as much as he can,
- because as great as the abundance might be,
- a very few will share it among themselves,
- leaving the rest to poverty.
- And it almost always happens that
- the latter are more worthy of luck
- than the others:
- rapacious, evil and useless.
- Thomas Moore (Utopia)
From the heart of the Lacandona jungle
Without commotion, without large headlines, without booming shouts from radio and television announcers, but, yes, with great strength and determination, the indigenous Mexicans are tearing down walls of concrete and of injustice which have contained them for more than 500 years, as demonstrated by the "indigenous uprising for peace: never again a Mexico without us," celebrated this year on April 10. More recent news - almost always without echo in the "great press" - coming from someplace in the "Lacondona jungle," has allowed us to know of a message from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation to the municipality in rebellion Tierra y Libertad, occupied by the hordes of chaos last May 1. Written from the exile of their profound silence, and directed to all those who want to listen to them, its fundamental objective is to congratulate the members of all the autonomous municipalities, but also to declare that, thanks to them, the zapatista dream, their utopia, is becoming reality. These are their words:
"Congratulations to all those men, women, old ones and children who order and obey in this zapatista Municipal Council in rebellion.
Congratulations to all of us, men and women, who learn and know how to govern ourselves with Democracy, Liberty and Justice.
Brothers and sisters: this is our dream that we dream and that our fallen companeros dreamed on January 1, 1994. And one December 19, in 1994, the EZLN announced to the Mexican people, but above all to the bad government, the 38 zapatista municipalities in rebellion, thus withdrawing recognition from the municipalities which the bad government imposes on us. And this is one of the municipal councils where today, men and women with hearts of joy and hope are, because we knew, the living and the dead, how to earn it. Because the people resist in the mountains and in the cities, and today we continue resisting with our rebellion. . .
"The bad government has wanted to take away our municipalities through their war. They can take away our municipalities: the house, the Municipal Council building, as happened to the companeros of Guadalupe Tepeyac (February, 1995), but they cannot take away our dignity of the municipalities in rebellion, participating with us, struggling with us, governing with us... "
(Personal communication, May 2, 1998).
For those who think that the dignity of the people of Chiapas has been bought, or that fear has invaded to the point of their renouncing the building of their dream, the previous words show that they are wrong. And they would be even more wrong still, if they let themselves listen to the voices of Claribel and Sonia, during the demonstration of 2000 persons in defense of the autonomous municipality, last May 11. Among other things, the former insisted:
"We are willing to raise and to build, as many times as the powerful ones want to destroy, our Municipal Council building,. In each destroyed building will remain the footprint of the powerful, "the destroyer of hopes." That is what they do, that is what they want, the soldiers and police can take as much time as they want, but they will always be engraved with the people's repudiation . ."
(Enlace Civil, May 18, 1998).
And Sonia expressed even more forcefully still:
"Violence, repression, discrimination and robbery, made by the government in Mexico, which is directed straight from Los Pinos, seeks the way to make us fall on our knees in front of their throne. Pride and power have demonstrated one more time that he who rejects servitude will be treated like an animal and will be denied everything. But, these people here came to demonstrate one more time as well, that, despite being besieged militarily by the bad government, being between cannons, tanks, armed personnel carriers, being under the threat of bombers, being under the threat of artillery helicopters, we are challenging them and we will continue challenging them with our only weapon: reason. . .The bad government can put more of our companeros in jail, but they can never do that with our dignity... "
(Ibid.)
There, in the Selva, in the North, in Los Altos, in the Canadas, in places that don't even appear on maps, and whose names are for many of us by times unpronounceable, the people resist, advance, struggle, self-govern "with hearts of joy and hope." What happened in February of 1995 in San Pedro de Michoacan - where they built the first Aguascalientes - and the latest occurrences, most recently in Taniperla (April 11) and Tierra y Libertad (May 1), have not crushed them. They continue on full alert, in conditions in which they themselves are denied the supposed State of law, as they have denounced several times, from the very place of the events. Another demonstration of their firm resolve to continue resisting, although they feel prisoners of fear, is the communique directed by the women of Taniperla "to civil society, to the communications' media and to the National Commission of Intermediation" (Conai) on April 19, 1998, eight days after having suffered the assault and destruction of the municipality Ricardo Flores Magon:
"Brothers and sisters:
We, the women, zapatista bases of support, and of the ARIC Independent and Democratic, continue informing about and denouncing the climate of harassment, destruction and persecution which we are subjected to, and which we have denounced since April 11, when more than 50 Public Security, Judicial and Army vehicles entered, in order to destroy, together with the PRI-MIRA (paramilitary group, Antizapatista Indigenous Revolutionary Movement), the autonomous municipality, to detain and unjustly send 18 persons to jail on false charges, break into the church of San Pedro and destroy and rob various things, loot the belongings from some of the houses, and other events which we have already denounced and which have obliged us to remain in our houses, hide our children and husbands, suffer hunger and fear... "
(Enlace Civil, April 19, 1998).
They went on to denounce why they are being hounded by a large concentration of PRI members from the neighboring towns: because they are trying to make them sign an act in which they recognize themselves as members of the PRI, and that they request the presence of the Army, Public Security, and the Judicial police, and that they are against the autonomous municipality. In spite of everything, they have continued to resist, putting up with the rape threats, the provocations and persecutions of some 40 PRI members (whose names they will announce). The paramilitaries, in addition, try to trap the refugees in the mountain, while they rob and destroy everything in their path. Despite all this, fenced in as they are by the hordes of chaos, who say they are going to reestablish "the State of law," they have somehow managed to deliver their denunciation to Enlace Civil, so that all of their "brothers and sisters" will know that the "military training of the MIRA-PRI, in other nearby communities, supported and emboldened by the military and judicial police presence in the area" is continuing. Further on, so that we do not think they are film heroines, they openly confess: "Each day we suffer more and are more fearful. Because of this we have organized to inform you... " Exactly, thanks to this information, the Italian observers wanted to come here.
The heart of the people, persecuted, harassed, made terrified, is present here. It is part of our own Body. Flesh of our Flesh . . The Army and police burst into the communities not to "enforce" the "Firearms and Explosives Law," - as the Zedillo government officially declares - rather to cause pain and destruction, to sow division and, returning home, to water the chiapeneco earth with rebel indigenous blood. Those who violate the law, those who should be judged as "transgressors of the law" (from our Constitution and from the Law for Dialogue, Conciliation and a Dignified Peace in Chiapas, of March 11, 1995), are not the zapatistas, but the government headed by Zedillo and Albores, as well as the PRI members at their service, organized into paramilitary groups whose ultimate goal is "to destroy the zapatista seed." Protected by impunity and by Army and police weapons, they encourage an ethnocide of extraordinary inequity against women, children and old persons, defenseless, unarmed, starving. And, in this same context of dirty war, Zedillo and his chorus (PRI, PAN or PRD members) call on the EZLN for "direct dialogue," because, for them, the National Commission of Intermediation is "biased." Further, in the height of arrogance and disregard, and with absolute lack of respect for the President of the CONAI, Emilio Rabasa urges Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia: "give me an explanation of why and what it is you're getting at... because if what you're looking for is a kind of political participation, then participate openly in a political way, but not through a body that was created for another purpose." (La Jornada, May 20, 1998). Perhaps the currently fancied "coordinator of dialogue" thinks that with this rude and aggressive language he will be able to destroy the CONAI and disparage its president, in order to favor the "direct dialogue" proposed by his patron, Doctor Zedillo, who, most certainly, accuses the "theologians of violence," but says nothing about carrying out the minimal conditions demanded by the EZLN for the renewal of dialogue. Among others, the demilitarization and deparamilitarization of the "conflict zone," as well as the liberation of the prisoners of conscience, and, most importantly, the carrying out of the San Andres Accords.
Surrounded by a triple siege - military, economic and news - the zapatista tzotziles, tzeltales, choles and tojolabales, have resisted, for more than four years, all the tricks of the war of high inequity against their people, their communities and their autonomous municipalities. When the San Andres Accords were signed on February 16, 1996, many of us thought that the PRI would finally pay their historic debt to the unindianized (not to say, westernized) Indians that we have in Deep Mexico, in order to reestablish the State of law and incorporate all the indigenous peoples, on an equal level, into national life. However, before the end of that same year, the government treason was clear and evident with their refusal to keep their word, presenting a series of observations to the proposed Law, which had been drawn up by the Commission of Concordance and Peace, in order to carry out those Accords. More than two years later, the government bellicosity puts the peace process at risk more every day, not just in Chiapas, but in the entire country.
Despite everything, the indigenous peoples resist and insist, as we have seen, that he carry out what was signed. For them, one's committed word should be kept without reservations. In this matter they, who see themselves as "true men," recognize respect for contracts as a fundamental ethical principal: "yich' ta muk" in tzeltal language. But in every indigenous culture the word is sacred and deserves respect. It was exactly in order to demand this respect for the Accords signed in San Andres, that the National Indigenous Congress had called the "indigenous uprising for peace: never more a Mexico without us."
Nonetheless, we do not think they were fooled by the government. From the very moment of the dialogue, at the conclusion of the Table on Indigenous Rights and Culture, they predicted that "only the broadest social mobilization will be able to give form to these fundamental demands." And still, a little further along, they insisted:
"The political path to dialogue and the solution of the primary demands of the Mexican people, will not come from the supreme government, but rather from civil society, the independent social and political organizations. The new peace, the one which Mexicans need , the one we deserve, will come from ourselves, from our determination, from our hope... The Dialogue of San Andres completes one stage. The struggle for the recognition of indigenous rights continues. Its path will go along together with other paths, together with other Mexicans who carry the same flags, those of democracy, of liberty and of justice, and one thought, that of national liberation. . ."
(Op. Cit., ibid.).
There are in these words a kind of premonition, or, better, a prediction, concerning the conduct that the "supreme government" would follow after the signing of the Accords. And for that reason they call on civil society, to the independent social and political organizations: to us, all. What they demand, in other words, is solidarity, companeroism, in order to advance "together with other Mexicans who carry the same flags." Disgracefully, given the course that the peace process has followed, it would seem that that there are still very few of us Mexicans who recognize ourselves in the zapatistas' mirror, despite the fact that on some occasions, as on September 11, 1997, or on January 12, 1998, we have proclaimed out loud "you are not alone!." But yes, they are. We have left them alone. If the numerous "civil camps for peace" had continued, which were inaugurated in 1994, the bloody incursions by the hordes of chaos might not have been so frequent nor so bloody, and, perhaps, neither would the paramilitary groups have proliferated in the regions of Los Altos, the canadas, the North and the Selva. For that matter, neither would the crime against humanity been perpetrated in Acteal, on December 22, 1997, when - it is necessary to remember - 21 women, 15 children and 9 grown men - lost their lives. Forty-five indigenous tzotziles in all, refugees in the municipality of Chenalho, expelled from their communities of origin, assassinated while they were praying for peace.
As one can see daily, through various channels, the dirty war in Chiapas, and in other places in our Country, continues. Even the fires which have been proliferating in several states appear to have been provoked by criminal hands, and any person with knowledge of the traditional customs and practices of the Mexican campesinos, before the sowing season, know that they have never caused fires like those of this spring, which have not only increased pollution levels to unforeseen heights, but they are also destroying our habitat in an irreversible manner. One more time the very so-called "State of law," which the PRI (federal, state and local), according to their statements, wants to re-establish, is only a pretext for continuing to violate the fundamental human right to a dignified life.
Victims unconscious of this other aspect of the dirty war, which consists in the manipulation of the news - through distortions and silence, or deliberate lies from the government spokespersons and the venal press -,who openly violate Article 6 of the Constitution (concerning freedom of information), millions of Mexicans have not perceived the gravity of the situation which we suffer. As Jaime Aviles, the village idiot <columnist, La Jornada, Mexican newspaper>, states, the regime is paralyzed in front of the greatest natural and political disaster seen in this country since the 1985 earthquakes. But the difference is,in that catastrophe, the volunteer brigades took the initiative, today civil society remains impassive and does not react. The house is burning down, and we don't move." ("Fire: Is the Country Burning?," in La Jornada, May 23, 1998).
It would seem that, without metaphors, our house, the ecological niche where we are living, is at the point of collapse. And not only in Chiapas. Now not only in tzotzil, chol, tojolabal and tzeltal areas, but in hundreds of thousands of hectares, and in hundreds of communities destroyed by the natural fire and by the political conflagrations. As an example of political paralysis, it is enough to remember the following: when the possibility arose that Zedillo's government would convert what the "drug traffickers" in power had channeled into the banks (of which we do not know who and how much), for the benefit of a very few, would be converted into public debt, not even a single protest demonstration occurred. And we are talking about 552,000 million pesos, financed now through our taxes, and, supposedly, paid (once more) by the people, through technocratic mechanisms which I do not understand, but that will continue, I imagine, to deepen injustice, hunger, inequality, especially among the poorest of the poor: the campesinos and indigenous and the urban proletariat!
As long as we only cry "Zapata vive, the struggle continues," without organizing ourselves efficiently and without identifying ourselves with the rebels of dignity, with the tender zapatista fury, as Indians of the world, it will not be possible to move towards peace with justice and dignity. Truly, as the members of the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee (CCRI-CG) so well predicted, in the Third Declaration from the Lacondona Jungle, one year from their untimely eruption into our lives:
"Peace will come through democracy, liberty and justice for all Mexicans. Our step cannot find the just peace that our dead call out for if it is at the price of our Mexican dignity. The earth does not rest and it moves in our hearts. The betrayal of our dead asks for struggle to wash away its shame. . ."
Paradoxically, the struggle to which the zapatistas have invited us, practically from the beginning of the armed uprising, is not violent, rather peaceful. It does not try to arm us with rifles, gunshot, AK-47's and other military paraphernalia, rather to arm us with courage, the courage which rises from our dignity, from the memory of our dead: in Ocosingo, in Aguas Blancas, in Acteal... , in canadas, mountains and jungles, where hundreds of human lives have been cut down by government hatred. . . Which tries to dismantle, by peaceful means, not only the paramilitary groups, but also the State party and neoliberalism, in order to install an authentic State of law, where the power of strength does not govern, rather the strength of reason. That is to say, where money doesn't govern, nor does the lie govern, as has happened up until now. Perhaps it is necessary to remember now how the zapatista utopia was born, and the mythical words which narrated its beginning:
"When the EZLN was just a shadow sweeping through the clouds and the darkness of the mountain, when the words justice, liberty and democracy were only those: words. Barely a dream which the old ones of our communities, true guardians of the word of our dead, had delivered to us in the time just when the day gives way to night, when hatred and death were beginning to grow in our hearts, when there was nothing left but desperation... , the true men spoke, those without faces, those who walk in the night, those who are mountain, and they said: It is the reason and the will of good men and women to seek and to find the best means of governing and being governed, that which is good for most, is good for everyone."
Such is the ethical task we commit to by being "Indians of the world," - as the Italian observers baptized themselves, who were illegally expelled from our country on the morning of May 11, 1998. It is not an easy task, and if not, ask the women, children and old ones, in refuge in the mountain, subjected to countless humiliations, to hunger, to the cold, to anguish, to pain, to death. Also ask the prisoners in the Cerro Hueco, who undergo, in that repulsive jail, shortages and indescribable suffering. Ask those who are surrounded by the Army, held hostage and vilified by the paramilitaries, laid siege to by the state and federal police. Most certainly all of them would tell us that, truly, the task is not simple... and even less for them, who have resisted for 500 years, and even more so in recent years, the hounding, the threats, the government will to exterminate them, either by hunger or by shootings. It is true, the task is not simple, but by whatever means, it is our task: to stop the war criminals in order to build peace with justice and dignity.
Among the news which has arrived to us from Utopia, perhaps one of the most symbolic has been that which called us to attend the First Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, from July 23 through August 3, 1996. There, from the heart of the Lacondona jungle, more than 4000 spectators attended the birth of the International Network of Hope, initially made up of 42 countries of the five continents of Gaia, our Mother Earth. At the conclusion of this happy event, the CCRI-CG of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, through the voice of subcomandante Marcos, sent us the following message:
"Much will be written later about what has happened during these days. Today we can say we have something less than a certainty. A dream dreamt on the five continents can become reality in La Realidad. Who could tell us now that a dream is beautiful, but useless? Who could argue that dreams... cannot become reality?
"To whom does it matter how and what is dreamed here, or in what part of the world? Who are those who dare to call with their dream to all the dreams of the world? What is happening in the mountains of southeastern Mexico which finds echo and mirror in the streets of Europe, the suburbs of Asia, the countryside of America, the towns of Africa and the houses of Oceana... ?
"The five continents speak and everyone listens. Humanity stops for one moment its silence of shame and anguish. Humanity speaks. Humanity listens...
"In their world, those who live in Power and those who kill by Power, the human being is not valued, there is no space for hope, there is no room for tomorrow... "
Buried under the dust of their daily lives, of immediate events, of the financial cracks, of the daily scandals provoked and played out by the drugocracy - in Tabasco, in Campeche..., in Morelos... or in Mexico City itself - these words constitute a call, to all of humanity, for them to free themselves from the neoliberal nightmare and prepare themselves to build a space for hope, breaking "on every continent, in every country, on every farm, in every house, the siege of war of Power that closes the rebels in... [Because now] the rebels are walking one towards the others. They find each other and, together, they break other sieges... They continue in their exhausting walk, they walk as they must walk now, that is to say, fighting... "
Without strength in ones heart it will not be possible for us to walk that path, nor to sustain the abundance of pain and suffering that awaits us in this battle, which is being joined by battalions of San Patricio who speak French, English, German, Italian, Swiss, Greek, Japanese, Chinese... and who knows how many more languages. However, all of them have understood the zapatista Ya basta, and in many ways have broken sieges, time and again, in order to go on building the Utopia. We are also called on to break the siege of the government-made stupidity, which will not stop demonstrating its will to destroy the zapatista seed. First was Zedillo's treason to his promise of dialogue, on February 9, 1995, and then, one after the other, successive treasons to his contracted commitments, from the Law for Dialogue... , on to the San Andres Accords and the repeated promises of dialogue, of concordance, of peace... But the deeds, also repeatedly, contradict his words. In his reality, without a declaration of war, the rebels suffer from a permanent state of siege, with all the consequences implied in that situation.
The State of impunity which prevails in the so-called "conflict zone," especially since the crime against humanity committed in Acteal, merits the formation, at an international level, of a tribunal charged with judging the war crimes committed every day by the Zedillo government, accomplice, if not intellectual author, of the outrages perpetrated by the Army, police and paramilitary hordes. The most recent of those, as far as we know, is that which occurred in Navil, municipality of Tenejapa, just last May 26. The chronicle sent by Hermann Bellinghausen of La Jornada, leaves no doubt as to the arbitrariness, arrogance and outrage against the constitutional and human rights of the residents of Navil. Let us think about Bellinghausen's word:
"Around 8 yesterday morning several federal Army vehicles arrived in Navil, whose forces, armed and uniformed, entered in to the community and arrived at the school, questioning the campesinos and the teachers over the existence of a zapatista camp, and whether they knew 'Bishop Samuel.'
"Less than two hours later more Army vehicles arrived, accompanied by state and judicial police. According to one woman, who insisted on the fact, there were a total of 34 trucks.
"Juan Gomez Santiz, 18 years old, was 'kidnapped,' according to the women. They took him to the school, put a ski mask on him, a gun in his hands, 'and took photos and filmed him.' Afterwards, they also put him on the trucks.
"Besides 'sweeping' the presumed camp, police and military searched nearby family homes. They stole 5000 pesos from one, destroyed the furniture, took away dresses and skirts, product of the women's artisan work, who took them through their kitchens.
"Clay pots broken into bits, china plates turned to dust, cooked beans thrown on the patios. Bedrooms looted. Pillows ripped open.
"They took all the personal documents that they could find; identifications, birth certificates of even the children, school certificates. Also clothes, a Bible, tools, and even a toilet seat. One of the few things they left was a large loom for making rugs... "
These few paragraphs, from the extensive chronicle, are enough to document the unconstitutional violence established by the Zedillo government. The reason of force, with complete impunity, with all its pride and human insensitivity, violates human rights, the famous Law of Dialogue, the individual rights consecrated in the Constitution, and who knows how many more laws of positive rights... And, however, we read or we hear about, for more than three years now, this and other atrocities, as if it were one more chapter in a Made for TV movie. Have we perhaps lost, we as well, the capacity for indignation? Have we perhaps erased from our memory the Face without a face, multiplied by 1,111, going through our streets, and heard the multitudinous roar, crying out: "You are not alone! You are not alone!"? Perhaps fear, indifference, racist contempt, or all of that together, have left us paralyzed, prostrate, surrendered, on our knees in front of Power?
What we have seen and heard up to now, from January 1, 1994 to now, has been a kind of Chronicles of Utopia, which resists, which does not surrender, which keeps the call of Hope alive, Hope that, certainly, demands innumerable actions so that the impossible dream that calls to us can become reality: then today, even more than yesterday, the words of farewell at the First Encounter for Humanity... continue to be valid.
"Brothers and sisters:
"We continue being inconvenient. What the neoliberal theorists tell us is false: that everything is under control, even that which is not under control.
"We are not the escape valve of rebellion which neoliberalism can destabilize. It is not true that our rebel existence legitimizes the power.
"The Power fears us. Because of that they persecute us and besiege us. That is why they jail us and kill us.
"In truth we are a possibility that can destroy them and make them disappear.
Perhaps we are not many, but we are men and women who struggle for humanity, who struggle against neoliberalism.
"We are men and women who struggle all over the world.
"We are men and women who want for the five continents:"Democracy!
"Liberty!
"Justice!
Upon arriving at this point, what more can be added? I think that everything has been said, that the zapatista silence - which is not that, if we have learned to listen to the clamor of the spilled blood or to the cry for help coming from Taniperla - well-deserved on our part, also, a moment of silence to meditate on this news that reaches us every day from Utopia: much of it tragic news, pregnant with pain, bathed in tears, but always a call to Hope, to struggle, to resist, to solidarity, to love. Answering this call is our task, our responsibility, our commitment. May 31, 1998
The news printed here has been taken from the volumes edited by Era, titled Documents and Communiques, whose author is the EZLN. The three texts published up to now, have prologues by Antonio Garcia Leon, and contain an article by Carlos Monsivais. Other news items come from personal communications, thanks to email. At times they are from Enlace Civil, A.C., and others from Nuevo Amanecer Press - a news agency specializing in indigenous problems, but especially the chiapeneco. Finally, some of them have arrived to us from La Jornada, one of the few Mexico City newspapers which has given voice to those without voice in many ways, and which has been accused, like don Samuel Ruiz, Bishop of San Cristobal de Las Casas, of being pro-zapatista. The magazine Ce-Acatl, cited here, is also a permanent source of contact for the indigenous movement.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SPANISH IN MEXICO BY GUILLERMO MICHEL, CORRESPONDENT FOR NAP-MEXICO. ************************************************************* TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY irlandesa FOR NUEVO AMANECER PRESS ************************************************************ ___________________________________________________ NUEVO AMANECER PRESS- N.A.P.To know about us visit: http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm *When reproducing NAP's translations; please give credit*