After a journey of days and hours from their communities, the thousands of indigenous women, with ski-masks and bandannas over their faces, marched through the main streets of the Royal City, to celebrate International Women's Day, and to denounce the racism that "the government never has admitted".
Barefoot or in sandals, in boots or tennis shoes, with their children wrapped in shawls at their breast to feed them, the Zapatista indigenous women also protested against the oblivion created by the government and the society.
"We struggle so that in Mexico there is justice, that our rights be respected, that we live as human beings and not as animals, that we be recognized as the peoples that we are and as citizens", they demanded while gathering in the plaza in front of the San Cristobal Cathedral, in whose center a seven meter high (21 foot) wooden cross was raised. Some of those who came to the former Jovel had never before left their communities, hidden in the Lacandon jungle or set back in the mountains of the Highlands. The opportunity to participate in the march was also an opportunity to get to know the city, to leave their communities, where no one knows they exist.
"..Nothing is said about the indigenous as peoples, and even less about the indigenous women; we do not appear in any law that the government makes because for it we do not exist", said of the women who, for the first time, spoke before thousands of her own people united in one place.
The cold of the city and the light rain that slowly soaked through were the reception for the indigenous Zapatista women who conducted the largest march ever of Tojobal, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, and Chol women, sympathizers and soldiers of the EZLN.
Some traveled by truck for several hours, others came to the city early. Silently they put on their ski-masks and walked through this city, famous for the racism of its inhabitants, the "authentic coletos", in honor of the Spaniards who founded the Royal City, who wore their hair tied up, in "a pony tail".
In a disciplined manner, they gathered in the Main Square of San Cristobal, and there they listened to the message which Subcomandante Marcos sent them through a communique: "doubly humiliated, as women and as workers, the Mexican indigenous women are also humiliated for the color of their skin, their language, their culture, their past. A triple nightmare that forces Zapatista women to take up a weapon and add her "Enough is Enough!" to those of their male companeros. A triple nightmare that forces a triple rebellion".
But in the face of the idea that the struggle for the dignity of women is against the man, Marcos stated: "we understand that this struggle is not against men, but is also for the rights of women. We understand that this struggle is not against Ladinos nor Mestizos, but is also for the rights of the indigenous women".
Later, an indigenous woman read a long communique from the Women for Dignity from the Zapatista Front for National Liberation. In broken Spanish, she said that the Zapatista indigenous women rose up with their companeros " because we were tired of the many injustices that the bad governments had submitted us to".
We are, they said, the product of 503 years of slavery, injustice, misery, exploitation, discrimination, and lack of rights. But now "we have begun our struggle to make ourselves valued, to make ourselves heard, to fulfill the demands that have never been met".
The rebel women spoke of the lack of services in their communities, of the absence of clinics and medicines to combat curable diseases, from which their children die, of the scarcity of schools and decent housing, potable water and electricity, and the lack of resources to make a land productive which is increasingly sterile.
They stated that they had risen up in arms in order to "struggle for our independence, so that the wealth of our country no longer be pillaged by foreign monopolies, so that our country no longer be run by a select few". Wrapped in their shawls, "chujs" and sweaters, the Zapatista women lifted up their bandannas with the demand that "the federal army leave our communities". Along these lines, in the communique, they denounced the fact that soldiers, police and economic bosses have fomented alcoholism and prostitution in the indigenous communities.
They described the situations created by the military presence since February of last year: "Our homes are used as whorehouses, the few classrooms for our children are occupied by the soldiers; the sports fields are used as parking space for tanks, helicopters and armed cars of the bad government".
Before leaving the plaza, which was guarded by dozens of soldiers and plainclothes police, some of whom were posted in the balcony of the city hall, the Zapatista indigenous women demanded to be taken into account in the agrarian laws, in order to have rights to the land; they demanded new labor laws to protect them; a national fund to support economic projects; special laws to punish the constant violations to which they are subjected; and that all forms of discrimination be considered crimes.
La Jornada, March 9, 1996 Jose Gil Olmos, writer,
Elio Hernandez, correspondent,
San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, March 8