"We are continuing with our struggle because we're the same as we were before. In poverty, the compaeros and the entire town of San Andre's, we're still the same. Our resistance is because they haven't fulfilled the demands we've been making since January of 1994." For Lucas Herna'ndez Ruiz, president of the Autonomous Municipal Council, "the people haven't moved backwards, but forwards, because, even though we have a lot of needs, we have made an effort to fulfill our responsibility and to look for the way to carry on."
"Yes, we exercise autonomy, because then we have the backing of the majority that way," Lucas Herna'ndez emphasized. "The people mandated that we hold the position for 3 years. If we begin making mistakes, or if we create some problem, they can remove us. We do not fight to hold the position, we are campesinos, nothing more. That is why we have to take turns working, there are 12 of us, and two judges, in addition to the authorities from the villages and the traditional authority who works with us."
The trustee and the first autonomous councilperson were accompanying him this afternoon. The three were dressed in the traditional black wool chuj, wearing beribboned sombreros and with their faces covered with scarves, which is a bit of a ritual, since they hold public positions. Later they will be accompanying the patron saint festival from the ayuntamiento hall with their faces uncovered.
"Our objective is for the people to mandate how they want to live with our children and our lands," said the first councilor, the youngest of the three. And he recognizes: "There's a long way to go in organizing along with the zapatista women, but the people have organized as they can in education, health, organizing work, in order to support their autonomous authority."
The trustee interjected: "I'd like to add how the people live. The truth is that poverty remains, but we are working the little land to have our maize. We don't have enough for the whole year. People leave to look for work or to rent lands for maize and a few beans." The young councilor immediately clarifies the fact that, for those who are known to be zapatistas, it's more difficult to leave, "because the military barracks, and the patrols on the highway, day and night, are still continuing"
One should not forget that this autonomous rebel municipality operates within a territory that is occupied by thousands of Mexican Army soldiers. It does not receive one cent from the government and, in a traditional society as complex as that of San Andre's, its responsibilities are clearly delineated.
"Most of the work we do concerns family or community problems. We organize the compaeros for the fields, so they can get more out of them. The commissioners deal with land problems, not us," said the council president.
"Some problems are quite big, sometimes we have to deal with them along with the official municipality, but we are able to understand each other," the trustee added. "The majority of the population, zapatistas and Priistas, come to ask for action and the help we give them. If it's needed, we provide service 24 hours a day."
The constitutional municipality - PRI by default in federal and state elections which are always snubbed - receives the entire budget in order to govern 20% of the population. This parallel government has kept the name of San Andre's Larra'inzar (which, not so paradoxically, refers to Ramo'n Larra'inzar, the old ladino owner and cacique of these lands), and it works outside the municipal facilities.
According to the autonomous president: "Since those in the PRI municipality are in the habit of asking for gifts in money or beer in order to resolve problems, and they collect it monthly, many PRIs come to us." And then something remarkable takes place: "Those who are in the wrong, and who know they aren't right, go to the official municipality to win their problem, because they can't pay for injustice with us, and everyone knows that. In villages which are PRI and zapatista, when there's a problem, the rural autonomous agents help those who are divided come to an agreement."
This afternoon, in the Aguascalientes of Oventic, the representatives from the Autonomous Council, in an interview with La Jornada, agree that, as the trustee says, "in the end, the people have mandated us to make autonomy and to be in resistance."
As authorities elected in mass assemblies, they have no other alternative: "We are quite aware that the San Andre's Accords have not been fulfilled. The people have not achieved what their dignity demands. The compaeros are going on, and that is why we are carrying on as well, to wherever we can."
The fiesta of the patron saint belongs to everyone in these Tzotzil lands, which are still very close to their native myths. Zapatistas and Priistas, in the plaza of the old village which has always been a municipal seat and carried the name of the saint, they dance and dine with devotion in the temple. The "batz'i vinik" (literally "true man") village has inherited San Andre's' wars with the "Rayo". Every year, the "Rayo" sends downpours and storms on November 30, in order to take vengeance on the Andreseros and to make it difficult and dangerous for them to reach the fiesta from their villages. But nothing stops them.
The strength of character which the Andreseros attribute to their saint says much about their own way of being a people. Their appropriation of the myth leads them to say - as noted by local scholar Miguel Herna'ndez Diaz - that the saint "likes to live better, that is, he's always unsatisfied with what he has." He is a capricious saint, certainly, and always dresses in too much clothing, but everything has its reasons.
He is considered to be a saint who is careful with what he has and who energetically protects his creatures. According to Herna'ndez Diaz: "He is brave and centered. When talking with the Angels of the Earth he is severe and self-confident. It pleases him to dress in primitive clothing, like the authorities in Larra'inzar wear now. In such a way he preserves a quite neat personality, with a beard, and short, straight hair, with a palm-leaf sombrero, woven shirt and huaraches in order to protect his feet from thorns."
This night, under a great moon almost covered by a cobweb of clouds, the San Andre's fiesta is exploding with rockets and dancing. The sky is bathed with lights, and it smells of gunpowder in the plaza. This time the fog is of smoke. At the doors of the ayuntamiento are the autonomous authorities, sitting, as always, carrying out their responsibilities, which today mandate them to accompany the festivities. Under the arcades, which were the scene of the San Andre's dialogues in 1995 - 1996, a group is playing electric cumbias. Hundreds of priest-like ceremonious indigenous are dancing to their own time and in their own fashion. The Autonomous Municipality's dance is on this side.
The musical group contracted by the official ayuntamiento is using a large grandstand next to the church and a sound system which is twice as loud. Just to say PRI at a fiesta means dancing less. A restlessness of quarrelsome "bolos" prevails, and there are a few fights. As a general rule, the drunkest ones always end up crying, and they don't have as much "fun" as they should.
Between table football and modest games of knife throwing in order to win shampoo, gum or chocolates, the fair is fueled by meat, bean and yerbasanta tamales, trays of nanche and tejocote in syrup, coconut sweets, roasted or boiled corn on the cob and punch with posh and bread crumbs.
When the display starts exploding, the plaza is lit up by firecrackers which spew fire in all directions. But no one in the crowd leaves, no one runs, they stay there as if nothing could happen to them. A "bolito" suddenly starts happily dancing under the rain of lights. The children egg him on, but they do not follow him through the fire. They might eat light, but not fire.
Inside the temple, which is always a place of extraordinary force, hundreds of flames are blazing on the ground, illuminating the magnificent decorations of cloth, crepe paper and cardboard, the fresh flowers of all colors, and the saint tucked in with his compaero saints. Several groups of musicians are looking after their harps. The explosions of rockets and toritos are very muffled in the temple. An involuntary chorus of recitations and prayers are heard. A woman is crying in Tzotzil, noisily, with great sadness, and she gets down on her knees in front of each of the saints, clutching her bosom. The children look at her with curiosity.
The harps sound then, and the guitars, from the golden and warm vibration of the candles. There are families sitting calmly on the floor, devout and in peace. This is a temple without benches, there is only the floor. Groups of people on their knees give in to the commands of their own sighs. A man lowers his forehead to the cold tile and keeps it there. The air smells of copal and melted wax. The natives (as they call themselves, instead of Indians or indigenous; the municipality of San Andre's has come to be where they are from) experience the pleasures of the fiesta. The almost pagan temple of San Andre's, erected in 1911, is a place which is so special that it has always seemed more like a space ship to this correspondent.
The mythic voyage of San Andre's, from the Virgin Mountain, where he was born, in Simojovel, to this place, necessitated that the patronymic hero and his first sons leave the "Laguna Espantosa" behind, which dried up and now no longer exists, and to fight continuously with "Rayo". It was a long voyage, full of obstacles, because of "Rayo" the enemy and Senor "Ocote", his associate. Miguel Herna'ndez Diaz has reconstructed the episodes of the founding voyage, the same steps which have been remembered today with the saints' processions and the captains' dances. "The night, such joy" a smiling old one said to me, pointing at the artificial fires from the atrium covered with ribbons of confetti.
During one of the nights of the legend, as they say the hour was eight, San Andre's and his people made a stop in order to recover their strength. It must have been a night like this. Why not, since it had not even rained today, like the vengeful "Rayo" had wanted? Herna'ndez Diaz, the narrator, said: "They had a delicious meal, and the men and women foresaw quite well that that night would be as if it were eternal life, without hunger or affliction. It was, then, feeling the soul of the better."
Originally published in Spanish by La Jornada _________________________ Translated by irlandesa La Jornada Saturday, December 1, 2001.