"Chiapas Against the Grain" 10th Itinerant Program Winter 2013

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México.

The independent collective “CHIAPAS AGAINST THE GRAIN” in San Cristóbal de las Casas has once again organized the tenth special winter program based on reflection workshops regarding Language and Culture within the context of different visions and values of space/habitat and their contradictions in the urban/rural spatial configuration under neoliberal policies, as well as the processes of cultural recreation and appropriation within the dynamic of the challenge of constructing new worlds.  Said program seeks, in short, to encourage exchanges of experiences between nationals and internationals about shared and diverse principles and values, using Chiapas’ socio-cultural reality as a reference.  Based on the idea that THOUGHT, LANGUAGE, AND REALITY are an identity that allows us to integrate different forms of communication and interaction, we will participate in different activities from visits to talks and videos as generators of collective reflection.


The program will take place from Wednesday, December 18-22, 2013.  The cost for the week’s activities will be $2,000 pesos for internationals and $1,000 pesos for Latin Americans.  The money is used to support independent cultural spaces in Chiapas.  Those who are interested and wish to receive more information can write to chiapasacontrapelo (at) cronopios.org . Our web site: http://www.chiapas-a-contrapelo.cronopios.org/ . Address:  Josefa Ortíz de Domínguez #34A. Barrio Santa Lucía. Telephone: +52 (678) 116-0806.

SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES FOR THE TENTH PROGRAM “CHIAPAS AGAINST THE GRAIN”

DECEMBER 18-22, 2013

	Wednesday 18	Thursday 19	Friday 20	Saturday 21	Sunday 22
9am 11am	Registration and Introduction	Plenary about reflection by previous day’s teams	Visit to a Rural City	Plenary about reflection by the previous day’s teams	Work in teams: “Space and autonomy”
11:30 2pm	Tour in teams (*) of the “dual city”	Work in teams: Lekil kuxlejal. A dignified life.		Work in teams: Autonomy and cultural appropriation: "Everything for everyone."	Plenary about the reflection in teams.
5pm 7pm	Reflection in teams about the activity in the “dual city”	Video and preparation for the visit to a Rural City	Reflection in teams about the visit.	Presentations: New worlds: coexistence and conflicts	Continuation of the plenary and final evaluation

(*)  “Dual city” is the concept Andrés Aubry used to characterize San Cristóbal de las Casas (Spanish residential center, indigenous periphery)

“Practice First, Then Theory:” The Zapatista Little School Shares Lessons Learned During 19 Years of Self-Governance

by Kristin Bricker, Americas Program

The first night of my homestay during the Zapatista Little School, my guardian and her husband asked if their students had any questions. My classmate and I both had experience working with the Zapatistas, so we politely limited ourselves to the safe questions that are generally acceptable when visiting rebel territory: questions about livestock, crops, local swimming holes, and anything else that doesn’t touch on sensitive information about the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).

My guardian’s husband patiently answered our mundane questions. Then he said, “Look, we entered into clandestinity in 1983, when the organization was just being formed. We walked hours at night to organize other towns, always at night so that the plantation owners wouldn’t get suspicious, and we went into the brush to train. My wife risked her life walking at night to bring bags of tostadas to the camps so that the insurgents would have food to eat during training. Now, do you have any other questions?”

My classmate and I looked at each other, our eyes seeming to say the same thing: “Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be at the Zapatista Little School.” Then our questions began in earnest, and our guardians and their neighbors enthusiastically answered every single one.

Setting the Record Straight

The Zapatistas made the decision to open up their homes to their long-time supporters and teach them about their past, present, errors, victories, and advances for several reasons. During the Little School, Zapatistas repeatedly said that they hoped their supporters could learn from their experiences.

“Self-governance… is possible. If we achieved it with just a few compañeros andcompañeras, why not with thousands or millions?” asked a Zapatista woman from Oventik. “We hope you’ll tell us if our practice, our experience with self-governance is in some way useful for you.”

“Many people think that what we’re doing, our form of governance, is a utopia, a dream,” said another Zapatista in Oventik. “For us Zapatistas, it is a reality because we’ve been doing it… through daily practice over the past 19 years. And that is why we think that if we join together with millions of Mexicans, we can form our own governments.”

Years ago, a Zapatista told me that they often learn more from their mistakes than from their victories. In that spirit, the Little School curriculum includes brutally honest discussions about errors the Zapatistas have committed over the years. For example, the textbooks include a frank discussion about the demise of the Mut Vitz coffee cooperative in 2007. Even though the cooperative’s sudden, unexplained closure was felt throughout the United States and Europe when roasters suddenly found themselves without a source of Zapatista coffee, the Zapatistas had not explained the reasons for Mut Vitz’s downfall until now.

In the Little School textbooks, Roque, a former member of the cooperative and current member of the San Juan de la Libertad Autonomous Municipal Council in Oventik, reveals that mismanagement and corruption ultimately lead to Mut Vitz’s demise. The cooperative had hired an outside accountant who, for reasons unknown to the cooperative members, did not accurately declare Mut Vitz’s assets to Mexico’s tax agency, which allowed the government to freeze their bank account. As Mut Vitz underwent an internal audit to determine what money the cooperative had left outside of the frozen account to pay producers who had supplied coffee on credit pending its sale, the Oventik Good Government Council discovered that members of the Mut Vitz board of directors were stealing money from the cooperative. The Council issued an order to arrest the guilty parties and seized some of their assets to replace the money they had stolen.

The Zapatistas also hoped to use the Little School to set the record straight about the state of their movement. They read the news, and they told students that they know the corporate media reports that Zapatismo is a dying movement, that the Zapatistas have turned their guns over to the government, that Subcomandante Marcos died of lung cancer or was fired, that the Comandancia (the Zapatista military leadership) meets secretly with the “bad government” and accepts millions of pesos from it, and that the Zapatistas are closet communists, amongst other baseless claims.

Furthermore, the Zapatistas admit that there have been traitors, compañeroswho left the organization and collaborated with the government. As one European activist said at the end of the Little School, “I think they realized that it had gotten to the point where Mexico’s security agencies knew more about how the Zapatistas’ government works than their own civil society supporters did, so they decided to let us in on what they’ve been up to.”

The Zapatistas’ civilian government is, after all, not clandestine, and non-Zapatista indigenous people routinely use its clinics, justice system, public transportation permits, and other services that they can’t seem to obtain through the Mexican government. Moreover, any non-Zapatista—be it the bad government or another indigenous organization—that wants to develop an infrastructure project that passes through Zapatista territory (roads or electricity, for example) must negotiate with the Zapatistas’ “good government” and therefore understands how it is structured. With the Little School, the Zapatistas have officially and for the record explained exactly how their government works.

Perhaps one of the Little School’s most important benefits for the Zapatistas occurred during its preparation. The Little School’s four textbooks, Autonomous Government part I and II, Women’s Participation in the Autonomous Government, and Autonomous Resistance, as well as the two DVDs that accompany the books, were all created by Zapatistas themselves. The textbooks are the result of Zapatistas from all five caracoles (Zapatista government centers) traveling to regions other than their own to collect testimonies and interview fellow Zapatistas about how they self-govern.

The Zapatistas’ bottom-up approach to government means that while all of the caracoles operate under the same basic principles and towards the same goals, their day-to-day operations sometimes differ drastically. For example, every caracol has a Good Government Board, the maximum governing body in the region. However, each caracol’s Board is structured differently. Many of the Zapatistas’ questions to their compañeros from other caracoles in the interview portion of the textbooks revolved around their experiences and what has worked and what has not.

For example, a Board member from Oventik asked former Board members from Morelia, “Are the twelve members of the [Morelia] Board able to do all of their work? Because in Caracol II [Oventik] there’s 28 of us, and sometimes we feel overwhelmed.” The Morelia Zapatistas’ response was that they, too, are overwhelmed, and they feel the need to restructure the Board, but they have been unable to come up with a better proposal thus far.

Governing from Below

When the Zapatistas rose up in arms in Chiapas on January 1, 1994, they knew they wanted freedom and autonomy. “But we didn’t have a guide or a plan to tell us how to do it,” a Zapatista education promoter explained to me. “For us, it’s practice first, then theory.”

While part of the EZLN drove rich landowners off of their plantations in the Chiapan countryside in the pre-dawn hours of New Year’s day, other contingents took seven major cities around the state. “All that we’ve accomplished was thanks to our weapons that opened up the path that we are walking down today,” explains a Zapatista from Oventik on a Little School DVD. “[Since then] everything that we have achieved, we have achieved without firing a single shot.”

Immediately following the uprising, the Zapatistas implemented autonomous government at the town level. Each town named its local authorities and formed an assembly. “But since we were at war, we kept losing local authorities,” explains Lorena, a health promoter from San Pedro de Michoacán in La Realidad. “There was disorder in the communities.” As a stopgap measure, the EZLN’s military leadership had to step up and fulfill roles that civilian authorities were unable to carry out during the chaos of the war.

The military leadership held consultations with civilian authorities, and together they decided to create autonomous municipalities in order to bring order and civilian governance to the rebel territory. In December 1994, the Zapatistas inaugurated 38 autonomous municipalities comprised of an undisclosed number of towns. Each autonomous municipality had its own municipal council named by the towns, allowing for increased coordination between towns and more formal organization of civilian affairs.

As solidarity activists began to arrive in Zapatista territory to donate money and labor, the EZLN’s command realized that some municipalities were receiving more support than other, more isolated ones. “At [the command’s] urging, the municipal councils met and began to hold assemblies to start to see how each municipality was doing, what support each was receiving, what projects were being carried out,” explains Doroteo, a former member of La Realidad’s Good Government Board.

In 1997, the Zapatistas formalized the assemblies of municipal councils by creating the Association of Autonomous Municipalities, comprised of representatives from each autonomous municipality. “With the association of municipalities, tasks and work in health, education, and commerce were overseen,” recalls Doroteo. “During that time a dry goods warehouse was created… with the idea of [economically] supporting the full-time workers in the [Zapatista] hospital in San José del Río.”

During the creation of the Association of Autonomous Municipalities, the Zapatistas formally redistributed the land they had taken over in the 1994 uprising. Landless Zapatistas left the communities in which they were born to settle on recuperated land they could finally call their own, fulfilling revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata’s creed, “The land belongs to those who work it.”

In 2003, the Zapatistas inaugurated the third level of their autonomous government, the five Good Government Boards, located in La Realidad, Oventik, La Garrucha, Morelia, and Roberto Barrios. However, the organization of higher levels of government does not mean that the Zapatistas are moving further away from direct democracy through local assemblies. On the contrary, all proposals must be approved by town assemblies.

Proposals can originate in town assemblies and work their way up the different levels of autonomous government if they affect more than just the town in which they originated. The proposals pass through the municipal councils, which then brings approved proposals to the Good Government Council, which then runs them by the command, which then sends the proposals back down through the five Good Government Boards, which send them to the municipal councils, which in turn send the proposals to the people at the town level for consultation and implementation.

The command can also create its own proposals and send them down through the three levels of civilian government to the town assemblies for consultation and approval. Therefore, even though the Good Government Boards are the highest level of the autonomous government, they have no authority to create laws. The Boards are limited to two main roles: to coordinate and promote work in their regions and to enforce and carry out Zapatista laws and mandates that have already been approved by the people.

Because the Zapatistas constructed their government from the bottom up, with people organizing themselves into community assemblies, which in turn organized municipal councils, which in turn organized the five Good Government Boards, everyCaracol is different. All work to implement the Zapatistas’ demands: land, housing, health, education, work, food, justice, democracy, culture, independence, freedom, and peace. However, the Zapatistas’ progress in implementing those demands varies from Caracol to Caracol. Some Caracols, such as La Garrucha, have collective economic projects such as stores or cattle to fund political activities at each of the three levels of government; other Caracols like Oventik only have collective economic projects in some towns.

Likewise, methods and success in implementing the Zapatistas’ Revolutionary Women’s Law varies. Morelia, for example, struggles to find ways to promote women’s participation in the higher levels of autonomous government. However, Morelia is unique amongst the Caracols because its Honor and Justice Commission (the judicial system) has a special plan for dealing with rape that aims to reduce re-victimization and encourage women to report crimes.

Constant Progress

Many have referred to recent Zapatista mobilizations such as their December 21, 2012, silent march and the creation of the Little School as a Zapatista “resurgence.” The Little School left one thing very clear: this is not a resurgence, because the Zapatistas never went away. During the school, students learned about the seemingly endless new cooperatives, the Zapatistas’ experiments in collective governance that are always being fine-tuned, and how donations from supporters were invested in livestock and warehouses so that they would pay dividends that would provide a steady long-term budget for hospitals and clinics.

The Little School’s lesson is clear: if the Zapatistas aren’t talking to the press, don’t commit the error of thinking that they are losing steam or have faded away. They are simply working extremely hard to advance their autonomy, and are too busy to get bogged down in countering the naysayers.

After all, their success is measured in their achievements and not their rhetoric. As one Zapatista man said at the end of a Little School class in Oventik, “We are demonstrating to the bad government that we don’t want it and we don’t need it, and it’s not necessary, for us to provide for ourselves.”

Kristin Bricker is a reporter in Mexico. She is a contributor to the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org.

Photos: Santiago Navarro F

"Chiapas Against the Grain" 9th Itinerant Program Summer 2013

If you're already planning on coming to Chiapas for the Zapatista events this August, consider extending your trip so that you can participate in this valuable program.

The independent collective “CHIAPAS AGAINST THE GRAIN” in San Cristóbal de las Casas has once again organized the ninth special summer program based on reflection workshops regarding Language and Culture within the context of different visions of space/habitat and the contradictions in the urban/rural spatial configuration under neoliberal policies. Said program seeks, in short, to encourage exchanges of experiences between nationals and internationals about shared and diverse principles and values, using Chiapas’ socio-cultural reality as a reference. Based on the idea that THOUGHT, LANGUAGE, AND REALITY are an identity that allows us to integrate different forms of communication and interaction, we will participate in different activities from visits to talks and videos as generators of collective reflection.

The program will take place from Monday, July 29 to August 2, 2013 (*). The cost for the week’s activities will be $2,000 pesos for internationals and $1,000 pesos for Latin Americans. The money is used to support independent cultural spaces in Chiapas. Those who are interested and wish to receive more information can write to chiapasacontrapelo (at) cronopios.org . Our web site: www.chiapas-a-contrapelo.cronopios.org/es . Address: 16 de Septiembre #28.

SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES FOR THE NINTH PROGRAM 

“CHIAPAS AGAINST THE GRAIN”

JULY 29 TO AUGUST 2, 2013

	Monday 29	Tuesday 30	Wednesday 31	Thursday 1	Friday 2
9am 11am	Registration and Introduction	Plenary about reflection by previous day’s teams	Visit to a Rural City	Plenary about reflection by the previous day’s teams	Work in teams: “Space and autonomy”
11:30 2pm	Tour in teams (*) of the “dual city” (**)	Work in teams: Lekil kuxlejal. Good life.		Work in teams: Autonomy and the 7 Zapatista principles	Plenary about the reflection in teams.
5pm 7pm	Reflection in teams about the activity in the “dual city”	Video and preparation for the visit to a Rural City	Reflection in teams about the visit.	Talk about Chiapas’ political and social situation.	Continuation of the plenary and final evaluation

(*) There will be three teams: Spanish, Tsotsil, and Tseltal

(**) “Dual city” is the concept Andrés Aubry used to characterize San Cristóbal de las Casas (Spanish residential center, indigenous periphery)

"We Will Win One Hundred Times Over": Translating the Zapatista Resurgence

by Joshua Stephens, Toward Freedom

Zapatistas march in Ocosingo,
December 21, 2012.
Source: Roarmag.org

On December 21st of last year, as many across the world were speculating about the end of the Mayan calendar, 40,000 actual Mayans marched silently into five cities in Chiapas, Mexico, putting the Zapatistas and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) back into the forefront of grassroots political discourse the world over, and mainstream political discourse in Mexico. A stream of provocative communiques from the EZLN's spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos, have followed.

For the better part of the last decade, Kristin Bricker has been documenting popular struggle in Mexico, particularly the Zapatista rebellion, and is one of the most prolific English translators of material produced by grassroots social movements across the country. Given the occasion of the seemingly sudden re-emergence of the Zapatistas, and her translations of its almost-daily literary flourishes, it seemed appropriate to catch up with her and solicit her reflections on the moment.

Joshua Stephens: I think a lot of people reading the pieces you've been translating the last month or so are wondering, so I'm just going to ask: Why now? Generally, the Zapatistas have mobilized at this volume in response to discreet events or conditions – North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the post-Institutional Revolution Party (PRI) electoral landscape, and so on. Do you have the sense that something in particular has sparked the resurgence?

Kristin Bricker: The current resurgence began with the December 21st mobilization in which 40,000 Zapatistas staged a silent march in five Chiapan cities. In their December 30th communique, they explained why they decided to step back into the limelight:  "After the media-driven coup d'état that exalted a poorly concealed and even more poorly disguised ignorance to the federal executive branch, we made ourselves present so that you would know that if they never left, neither did we." Here they are referring to the election of Enrique Peña Nieto to the country's presidency.

Peña Nieto is Mexico's George W. Bush. He won the 2012 election thanks to massive vote-buying. Everyone acknowledges that he is impressively stupid and not at all ashamed of it, and for the Left he's the devil incarnate. His godfather and puppet master is former president Carlos Salinas, who was in office when the Zapatistas staged their 1994 uprising. In order to pave the way for NAFTA, Salinas reformed Mexico's Constitution, essentially removing the land rights Emiliano Zapata and his peasant army fought and died for in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. As a result, Salinas continues to be even more unpopular than Peña Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderón, who launched the drug war that currently has Mexico embroiled in a deadly quagmire.

As governor of Mexico State, Peña Nieto laid a deadly trap for the People's Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a civilian peasant organization that has strong ties to the Zapatistas. In 2006, his government negotiated a deal with the FPDT that allowed flower vendors to sell flowers in the downtown area of Texocol, near Atenco. When the vendors, accompanied by the FPDT, showed up to sell flowers at the agreed-upon time and place, Peña Nieto's riot police were waiting for them. In the clashes that followed, police killed two protesters (including a fourteen-year-old boy, shot in the chest with live ammo) and gang-raped over twenty female detainees on a bus in front of other arrested demonstrators. No police have been punished for these abuses, but some demonstrators spent years in jail. Peña Nieto proudly claimed responsibility for the police's actions.

When he won the presidential election, it meant that the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for seventy years as a one-party dictatorship, would return to power after just a twelve-year hiatus. The Zapatistas were an important factor in the PRI's ouster following the 2000 elections, so it's fitting that they've chosen to go back on the offensive now.

JS: The initial communique following the late December march pretty openly acknowledged a widespread sense that the Zapatistas had eroded – as a force or presence – rather considerably. I remember conversations we had about the ebbing of The Other Campaign, autonomous communities' land-loss, and journalists' claims about Marcos being "put out to pasture". Was the "they don't need us in order to fail" comment simply an artful way to stage a return to visibility, or do you feel like it was taking aim at something?

KB: I actually have a different interpretation of that communique. I interpreted it as a response to all of the chatter in the Mexican and international media over the past few years that the Zapatistas had run out of steam, were losing ground, had failed to make any gains, and that Marcos was either dead or had been fired. As Marcos says in that communique, "We never left, even though media from all over the spectrum have dedicated themselves to making you believe that, and we are reemerging as the indigenous Zapatistas that we are and will be."

It's important to note that while this new set of communiques hopefully means that the Zapatistas are planning something proactive, they haven't been invisible over the past few years. In 2011, Marcos had some public written exchanges with two prominent men, intellectual Luis Villoro and writer-turned-activist Javier Sicilia. That same year, thousands of Zapatistas mobilized to march against the drug war in support of Javier Sicilia's peace movement. So if the Zapatista's disappeared from anywhere, it was from the corporate media's echo chamber. In reality, the Zapatistas never went away.

"They don't need us in order to fail" is an allusion to Karl Marx's assertion that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Earlier in that same communique, he argues that the political class is "too incapable and dishonest to see that within themselves they had and have the seeds of their own destruction." Marcos has said that over and over; he even wrote a children's book called "The Story of the Lion and the Mirror" where the lion represents capitalism and the mirror, which kills the lion in the end, represents how capitalism contains the necessary contradictions for its own destruction.

Current and previous presidential administrations have made it very clear that Mexican politicians and their Yankee puppet masters are perfectly capable of failing miserably without the Zapatistas' help. No one can blame the hell that we are living in Mexico on the Zapatistas. The kidnappings, the guns that are held to our heads, the bodies that hang from bridges as we go to work or take our kids to school–the Zapatistas had nothing to do with that. It is a direct result of the United States-backed drug war that former president Felipe Calderón started with guns blazing in order to distract the country from the fact that he'd stolen the election.

JS: Has the resurgence had effects on the ground? There are references in these texts to collaboration with adherents to the Sixth Declaration, but it seemed in recent years as though that network had languished some.

KB: The Other Campaign's success has depended entirely on the people who make up the local collectives and regional networks. Yes, in some areas, collectives have languished somewhat as they wait for the Zapatistas to tell them what to do next. But one thing that you have to keep in mind is that the Other Campaign is comprised of a lot of groups that have been organizing since before the Other Campaign. That's the case in Guerrero, where human rights organizations and autonomist community policing organizations united under the Other Campaign umbrella. They're on the front lines against the dirty war and drug war violence in that state; they don't sit and wait around for the next Zapatista communique to tell them what to do. They're always proactive, because it's a matter of life and death for them.

The Other Campaign also resulted in like-minded individuals coming together under the pro-Zapatista banner to do community organizing that they might have not been doing prior to the Other Campaign. That's the case in Chalco, a poor, crime-ridden area of Mexico State. In 2010, following a foreseeable disaster where a canal burst and covered Chalco with raw sewage (in some areas putting the entire first floor of houses under what the residents politely referred to as "mud"), a collective of Other Campaign adherents in Chalco built relationships with the local church to do the disaster relief the government refused to do. Operating under the Other Campaign mantra of "If they touch one of us, they touch all of us," the Chalco collective called on Other Campaign adherents in the region to help out. The Chalco collective used the church as a base of operations where Other Campaign adherents from Mexico City and surrounding areas could drop off donations and provide free services. A collective of doctors who are adherents to the Other Campaign came out to Chalco to provide medical care to people who were suffering infections due to their exposure to raw sewage. A hairdresser came out to give kids haircuts before they went back to school. Brigades repainted walls to cover up the flood lines that reminded people of the few days they spent living under a few feet of feces. Having the wall of a government-maintained above-ground canal burst and cover your town with poop is just about the most undignified experience a working class community could possibly suffer. The Other Campaign brought dignity back to Chalco, and the collective there is as strong as ever.

The Other Campaign has also strengthened the movement to free political prisoners.  Instead of every jailed Zapatista sympathizer all over the country having to fight for their freedom in isolation, they're essentially guaranteed a support network, not just in Mexico, but all over the world. Just look at how hard the New York-based Movement for Justice in the Barrio has fought for Mexican political prisoners. The release of these political prisoners over the years is a constant tangible win for the Other Campaign. [Interviewer's note: Since the time of this interview, Zapatista political prisonerFrancisco Sántiz has been released, a day after his being mentioned in an EZLN communique.]

That said, so far I haven't seen any tangible effects of this resurgence–just a lot of anticipation. The latest communique from Subcomandante Marcos said "to be continued…" So I think everyone is anxiously waiting to see what the Zapatistas have up their sleeves. I imagine that Other Campaign collectives all over the country are meeting to analyze and discuss the latest communiques.

Personally, I think the new communiques are uplifting. We've suffered so much under the drug war, myself included. It's debilitating to be constantly bombarded with carnage, guns held to your head, kidnappings, extortion… Can you imagine what it is like to be afraid to look out your window to see what that noise was in the street because you're afraid that you'll be seen seeing something you shouldn't have? I think that, for many people outside of Mexico, it's impossible to imagine living under those conditions, much less organizing under them. When 40,000 Zapatistas took the streets and then they began releasing these new communiques, I felt hope and energy for the first time in two years. I think a lot of other people feel the same way. I'm excited to see what they have to say, and I'm excited to be a part of it. If anyone knows how to go through hell and emerge stronger, the Zapatistas do.

JS: I remember seeing middle school-aged kids studying at the Zapatista school in Oventic back in 2008, and realizing that I was looking at 13 and 14 year olds who had effectively always been Zapatistas, inasmuch as they were born after the '94 uprising. By now, those kids have reached adulthood, entirely within those communities and the mode of being cultivated in them. Is what we're seeing reflective of that generation coming into the fold, as it were?

KB: That is something that a lot of people noticed: how many of the Zapatistas who marched on December 21 were young adults. The Zapatista autonomist process officially kicked off in 2003 when the EZLN unilaterally implemented indigenous rights in the territory it controlled. That's when the EZLN, the Zapatista's military apparatus, created the civilian Good Government Councils to govern in the newly created autonomous territory, which was divided into five caracoles, or regional capitals.  Positions on the five Good Government Councils are rotative and decided through the indigenous tradition of choosing leaders based on their prior service to the community.

The Zapatistas who are now reaching adulthood, getting married, and having children of their own were babies during the uprising, and they were about nine when the autonomous governing system was created with its own schools and healthcare. So they still attended government elementary schools and were neglected by government health clinics when they were sick. They grew up with the feeling of being an outsider, different, inferior, or, as the Zapatistas call it, "other."  Part four of Marcos' "Them and Us" communiques talk about that feeling. But these young adults also spent their very important formative years living under an autonomous indigenous governing system where their indigenousness is celebrated, not scorned. That has to be very important for them. And now they're old enough to serve on the Good Government Councils.

JS: Indigenous resistance is increasingly visible, the world over, especially in light of the Idle No More actions coming out of Canada. And that resistance is increasingly networked. Is that part of the conversation on the ground in southern Mexico?

KB: Since their uprising in 1994, the Zapatistas have been at the forefront of globalizing leftist–not just indigenous–struggle in the new information age. Many people have argued that the protests that shut down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999–an event that radicalized and mobilized my generation–were to some extent inspired by the Zapatista uprising.

Of course, indigenous and anti-colonial struggles have always had a special place in the Zapatistas' hearts. Some of the first people to visit them after the uprising were Irish freedom fighters and leaders from the American Indian Movement. The Zapatistas have organized international meetings of indigenous peoples so that they can share their struggles and strategies. They organized the founding of Mexico's National Indigenous Congress so that the country's indigenous peoples could participate in the indigenous rights negotiations between the Zapatistas and the government. While the Zapatistas haven't specifically mentioned Idle No More (it's still relatively new, and there is a language barrier), Marcos has repeatedly expressed support for Palestinians resisting Israeli colonization. A lot of people in the United States, even leftists, seem to forget that the conflict in Palestine is centered around colonists (although they call themselves settlers) attempting to seize indigenous land and resources by displacing Palestinians and imprisoning them in open-air prisons akin to what the US calls reservations. This fact is not lost on Marcos and the Zapatistas.

The Zapatistas are now closely watching the indigenous Mapuche's struggle for autonomy and indigenous and land rights in Chile. Marcos has mentioned the Mapuches in three of the four "Them and Us" communiques that have been published, at this point. I think we'll see a greater collaboration between those two struggles in the near future.

Video of the Zapatistas' December 21, 2012 march in Chiapas, Mexico:

***

Kristin's translations of the recent Zapatista communiques can be read (along with her coverage of struggle in Mexico more broadly) at My Word is My Weapon. Follow her on Twitter at @kristinbricker.

Joshua Stephens is a writer, editor, activist, and board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies, and co-editor at Counter Conduct. He splits his time between Brooklyn, NY and the Mediterranean. Follow him on Twitter at @joshuacstephens.

You're Invited to a Zapatista Party in August to Celebrate 10 Years of Autonomous Governement

Zapatistas love parties almost as much as they love autonomy.

Today Subcomandante Marcos released a postscript to his "Them and Us" series. I don't have time to translate the whole thing right now, but I do want to let you know about an upcoming party in Zapatista territory that was announced in the postscript.

Marcos acknowledged that a lot of people were upset about the Zapatistas' decision to password-protect some parts of future communiques.  This new postscript jokingly (as is his style) lets everyone know that the decision to password-protect some information will not mean that supporters will be left out of important Zapatista happenings:

"For example, if we put that an invitation that we're extending to you is for August 2013, when the Good Government Councils celebrate 10 years of carrying out free autonomy; and that there will be a small party in the Zapatista communities; and that it rains a lot around those dates, and that here, in addition to dignity, the only other thing there will be a lot of is mud, so those who come should bring what you need so that you don't end up being the color of the earth.  Well, those things, compass, we're going to password-protect, because most people aren't interested in that information, just those in the Sexta and some others who will be invited."

I'll post further details as the EZLN makes them public.  If you want to read the whole postscript in English, El Kilombo will surely have it posted to their site very soon.

Them and Us Part 5: The Sixth by Subcomandante Marcos

Password: marichiweu

THEM AND US

V.- THE SIXTH

ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY.

MEXICO.

January 2013.

To: The compañeros adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle all over the world.

From: The Zapatistas from Chiapas, Mexico.

Compañeras, compañeros, and compañeroas:

Compas in the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity:

Everyone, greetings from the women, men, children, and elders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, the smallest of your compañeros.

We've decided that our first word specially directed at our compañeros [who are adherents to] the Sixth should be made known in a space of struggle, such as the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity.  But the words, feelings, and thoughts that are sketched here are also meant for those who are not here.  And, above all, they're for them.

-*-

We would like to thank the support that you have given to our communities, to our Zapatista support bases and to the prisoners who are adherent compass in Chiapas, throughout all this time.

Your words of encouragement and your collective hand that connected with ours are guarded in our heart.

We are sure that one of the points to be discussed in your meeting will be, or has already been, setting up a campaign to support the compa Kuy, to denounce the attack that he was subjected to, and to demand justice for him and for all of the others who were injured on that day, to demand unconditional freedom for all of the detained in Mexico City and Guadalajara during the protests against the imposition of Enrique Peña Nieto as head of the federal executive branch.

Not just that, but it is also important that this campaign contemplate fundraising to support compa Kuy with his hospital bills, and for the costs of his subsequent recuperation, which the Zapatistas hope will be soon.

To support this fundraising campaign, we've sent a small amount of cash.  We ask you, even though it might be small, to add the money you're able to get together for our compañero in the struggle. As soon as we can put together more money, we will send it to whomever you [the Network Against Repression] designate for this work.

-*-

Hidden Text: Please click here to read the complete text: THEM AND US V - THE SIXTH.

-*-

Hidden Text: Please click here to read the complete text: THEM AND US V - THE SIXTH.

-*-

The Sixth is a Zapatista convocation.  To convoke is not to unite.  We aren't trying to unite under a leadership, neither Zapatista nor any other affiliation.  We do not seek to co-opt, recruit, take anyone's place, feign, fake, cheat, direct, subordinate, use.  The destination is the same, but the different, the heterogeneity, the autonomy of the ways of walking, are the Sixth's richness, they're it's strength.  We offer and will offer respect, and we demand and will demand respect.  One adheres to the Sixth without any other requisite other than the "no" that convokes us  and the commitment to construct the necessary "yeses." 

-*-

Hidden Text: Please click here to read the complete text: THEM AND US V - THE SIXTH.

To end this missive (which, as is evident, has the disadvantage of not having a video or song that accompanies it and completes the written version), we want to send our best hugs (and we only have one) to the men, women, children, and elderly, groups organizations, movements, who however each one of you calls yourselves, who have never during all this time distanced us from your hearts, and resisted and supported as compañeras, compañeras, and compañeroas that we are.

Compas:

We are the Sixth.

It's going to be very difficult.

Our pains won't be lessened by opening ourselves up to those that hurt all over the world.  The path will be the most torturous. 

We will fight.

We will resist.

We will struggle.

Maybe we'll die.

But one, ten, one hundred times, we'll always win always.

For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the

Zapatista National Liberation Army

The Sixth-EZLN.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

Chiapas, Mexico, Planet Earth.

January 2013.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Listen and watch the videos that accompany this text:



"Zapatista Cumbia" by the group "Sonido Psicotropical."  Part of the disc "Rola la lucha zapatista."  Move your tush to the cumbia rhythm!



"Nadie mira" [No one looks] by the group "RABIA."  With Iker Moranchel, Guitar and vocals.  Alejandro Franco, Drums and vocals.  Manco, bass.  Camera, Sara Heredia.  Editing, Eduardo Vargas, Recorded and edited in Gekko Audiolab, Mexico City, July 2012.  Also on the disc "Rola la lucha zapatista."  Rrrrrrrrrrrrrock!



Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Them and Us Part 4: The Pains from Below by Subcomandante Marcos

THEM AND US

IV.- The Pains From Below

January 2013.

How many times have the cops stopped us on the street for the crime of "having a suspicious face" or a mohawk, and then after a beating and extortion they let us go?

"Repression and Criminalizatoin," Anarchist Black Cross-Mexico.  January 2013

-And [what do you say] to the young people who see you as a hero and an example of a person who has been unjustly punished by a repressive system?

-That I'm not a hero.  That every one of the young people who hit the streets every day to organize and change this unjust society and this economic and political system are heroes.  They organize, they defend themselves… That they shouldn't be afraid, that fear is going to change sides--

Alfonso Fernández, detained in prison after N14 in the Spanish State, interviewed by Shangay Lily in Kaos en la Red.  January 2013. [1]

"An enemy is needed to give the people hope. (…) That said, the feeling of identity is based in the hatred of those who aren't the same.  It is necessary to cultivate hate as a civil passion.  The enemy is the people's friend.  They need someone to hate so that they feel justified in their own misery.  Always.  Hatred is the true primordial passion."

Umberto Eco.  The Prague Cemetery.

Where and when did the violence start?

Let's see.

In front of a mirror, on any calendar, and in any geography…

Imagine that you are different from everyone else.

Imagine that you are something very other.

Imagine that you have a certain skin or hair color.

Imagine that they look down on you and make fun of you, that they persecute you, that they jail you, that they kill you because of it, for being different.

Imagine that since the day you were born, the system has repeatedly told you that you are something weird, abnormal, sick, that you should be sorry for who you are and, after blaming it on bad luck or divine justice, you should do everything you can to change this "factory defect."

Juan Francisco "Kuy" Kuykendall

/ And of course, look, we have a product that easily works w-o-n-d-e-r-s with congenital defects.  This way of thinking relieves rebelliousness and that annoying complaining about everything.  This cream changes skin color.  This hair dye gives you a fashionable shade.  This course about "how to win friends and be popular on the internet" gives you everything you need to be a modern person.  This treatment will give you your youth back.  This DVD will show you how to act at the table, on the street, at work, in bed, during illegal muggings (robbers), during legal muggings (banks, government officials, elections, legally established businesses), at social gatherings… what?  Oh, they don't invite you to social gatherings? … ok, it also tells you how to make it so they do invite you.  In short, here you will know the secret of how to succeed in life.  Leave Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber in the dust on Twitter with your number of followers!  It includes a mask of your choosing.  We have them all!  Even a CSG [Carlos Salinas de Gortari] mask… ok, ok, ok, that was a bad example, but we do have one for any need.  So they won't look at you with disgust anymore!  So they no longer call you a degenerate, indian, prole, black, region 4, zombie, zapatistaphile! /

Imagine that, in spite of all your efforts and good deeds, you can't seem to hide your skin or hair color.

Now imagine that a campaign is launched to eliminate all of those who are like you.

Uriel Sandoval

It's not that there's an event to kick it off, or a law that establishes it, but you realize that the whole system starts to work against you, and against people like you.  The whole society turns into a machine whose goal is to annihilate you.

First there's looks of disapproval, disgust, distain.  Then there's the insults, attacks.  Then there's detainees, deportees, prisoners.  Then there's cadavers here and there, legal and illegal.  Finally there's an actual campaign, the machine at full capacity, to disappear you and all of those who are like you.  The identity of those who make up society is maintained through hatred towards you.  Your crime? Being different.

-*-

You still don't see it?

Ok, imagine that you are… (use masculine, feminine, or other pronouns, depending on the case).

Celedonio Prudencio Monroy

An indigenous person in a country dominated by foreigners.  A flock of military helicopters is headed toward your lands.  The press will say that the wind farm occupation impedes the reduction of pollution or that the jungle is being destroyed.  "The eviction was necessary to reduce global warming," says the Interior Minister.

A black man in a nation dominated by whites.  A WASP judge is going to sentence him.  The jury found him guilty.  Amongst the evidence presented by the prosecutor is an analysis of his skin color.

A Jew in Nazi Germany.  The Gestapo officer stares at him.  The next day the official report will say that the human race has been purified.

A Palestinian in present-day Palestine.  The Israeli army's missile is aimed at the school, hospital, neighborhood, house.  Tomorrow the media will say that they took out military targets.

An immigrant on the other side of any border.  The border patrol approaches.  The next day there won't be anything about it in the news.

A priest, nun, layperson who sided with the poor, in the middle of the Vatican's opulence.  The Cardinal's sermon is against those who meddle in worldly affairs.

 Adrián Javier González Villarreal

A street vendor in an exclusive mall in an exclusive residential zone.  A truck full of riot police parks. "We defend free trade," the government delegate will declare.

A woman by herself, day or night, on public transportation full of men.  A small tick in the "gender violence" statistics.  The cop will say: "it's that sometimes they provoke them."

A gay by himself, day or night, on public transportation full of machos.  A small tick in the "homophobic violence" statistics. 

A sex worker on a strange street and someone else's corner… a squad car pulls up.  "The government is cracking down on white slavery," the press will say.

A punk, a Rastafarian, a rudeboy, a cholo, a metal head, on the street at night… another squad card approaches.  "We're putting a stop to antisocial behavior and vandalism," says the elected official.

Cruz Morales Calderón

A graffiti artist "tagging" the World Trade Center… another squad car pulls up.  "We'll do everything necessary in order to have a beautiful and attractive city for tourism," says some official.

A communist at a rightwing fascist party meeting.  "We're against the totalitarianism that has done so much damage around the world," says the party president.

An anarchist in a communist party meeting. "We are against the petit bourgeois deviations that have done so much damage to the global revolution," says the party's chairman.

A segment from the "31 minutos" news broadcast on the CNN news ticker.  Tulio Triviño and Juan Carlos Bodoque look at each other, disturbed, but they don't say anything. [2]

An alternative band trying to sell its CD at a concert starring Lady Gaga, Madonna, Justin Bieber, whoever comes after them.  The cops approach.  The fans scream like crazy.

Juvencio Lascurain

An artist performing traditional indigenous dances outside of the great cultural center where the (yes-gala-invitation-only-we're-sorry-ma'am-you're-getting-in-the-way) Bolshoi ballet company is performing.  Security proceeds to reestablish calm.

An old man in a meeting chaired by Japanese finance minister Taro Aso (he studied at Stanford and just a little while ago asked that the elderly "hurry up and die already" because it's really expensive to keep them alive).  Social spending is cut even further.

An Anonymous criticizing a Microsoft-Apple shareholders meeting about copyrights.  "A dangerous hacker behind bars," the media will say.

A young Mapuche who, in Chile, demands his ancestors' territory as he watches the olive-green offensive roll in with tanks and carabineers.  The bullet that fatally wounds him in the back will not be punished.

Matías Valentín Catrileo Quezada

A youngster and/or student or unemployed worker at a military-police-civil guard-carabineer checkpoint.  The last thing he heard?  "Shoot!"

An indigenous Nahua in the offices of a transnational mining company.  Men in uniforms kidnap him.  "We're investigating," say respective governments.

A dissident in front of a grey metal fence that's been erected, while on the other side the Mexican political class bites their tongues about yet another imposition.  He's hit with a rubber bullet that causes him to lose an eye or break his skull. "It's called uniting for the good of the country.  It's time to put the bickering behind us," say the talking heads on the news.

 Francisco Sántiz López

A peasant in front of an army of lawyers and police hearing that the land that he works, where his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on were born and grew up, now belongs to a real estate company, and that you're depriving the poor businessmen of something that legally belongs to them.  Jail.

Someone who opposes the electoral fraud sees how 40 thieves and their boot-lickers are exonerated.  The mockery: "We've got to turn over a new leaf and look forward."

A man or woman approaches to see what all the ruckus is about and is suddenly surrounded by law enforcement.  While they shove, beat, and kick her or him as they take her to the squad car, you manage to see that a well-known television channel's cameras are pointed somewhere else.

An indigenous Zapatista in the bad government's (PRI-PAN-PRD-PT-MC) jail for years.[3]  He reads in the newspaper: "Why did the EZLN reappear now that the PRI has returned to power?  Very suspicious."

-*-

Are you still with us?

Now…

Do you feel with certainty that you're out of place?

Do you feel the fear from being ignored, insulted, beaten, mocked, humiliated, raped, imprisoned, murdered just because of who you are?

Do you feel the impotence of not being able to do anything to avoid it, to defend yourself, to be heard?

Do you curse the moment that you went to that place, the day you were born, the hour you began to read this text?

-*-

Several of the aforementioned examples have names, calendars, and geographies:

Juan Francisco Kuykendall Leal.  The compa "Kuy," adherent to the Other Campaign, professor, thespian, director.  Skull smashed open on December 1, 2012, by a shot from "law enforcement."  He planned to do a play about Enrique Peña Nieto.

José Uriel Sandoval Díaz.  Young student at the Autonomous University of Mexico City and member of the Student Struggle Committee.  He lost an eye in the repression on December 1, 2012, as a result of a "law enforcement" attack.  He was planning  to resist the imposition of Enrique Peña Nieto.

Celedonio Prudencio Monroy.  Indigneous Nahua.  Kidnapped on October 23, 2012 by "law enforcement."  He was planning to resist the plundering of Nahua lands by mining companies and loggers.

Adrián Javier González Villareal.  Young student at the National Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon's Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Department in Mexico, murdered in January 2013 by "law enforcement."  He was planning to graduate and become a successful professional.

Cruz Morales Calderón and Juvencio Lascurain.  Peasants taken prisoner in Veracruz, 2010-2011, by "law enforcement."  They were planning on resisting the plundering of their lands by real estate companies.

Matías Valentín Catrileo Quezada.  Young indigenous Mapuche, murdered on January 3, 2008, in Chile, Latin America, by "law enforcement."  He was planning on resisting the plundering of Mapuche land by the government, estate owners, and transnational companies.

Francisco Sántiz López, indigenous Zapatista, unjustly imprisoned by "law enforcement."  He was planning on resisting the government counterinsurgency campaign of [former Chiapas governor] Juan Sabines Guerrero and [former president] Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.

-*-

Now… don't despair, we're almost done...

Now imagine that you aren't afraid, or you are but you get it under control.

Imagine that you go and, in front of the mirror, not only do you not hide anything or cover up your difference with makeup, and instead you emphasize it.

Imagine that you turn your difference into a shield and weapon, you defend yourself, you find others like you, you organize, you resist, you struggle, and without even realizing it, you go from "I'm different" to "we're different."

Imagine that you don't hide behind "maturity" and "good judgement," behind "now is not the time," "the conditions aren't right," "we have to wait," "it's useless," "there's no way to fix it."

Imagine that you don't sell out, that you don't give up, that you don't give in.

Can you imagine it?

Ok, well even though neither we nor you know it yet, we're part of a "we" that's bigger and has yet to be built.

(to be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Listen and watch the video that accompanies this text:


"Born Free" by M.I.A. (Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam).  Video director: Romain Gavras (son of Costa Gavras).  Photography: André Chemetoff.  Produced by: Mourad Belkeddar.  Executive Producer: Gaetan Rousseau / Paradoxal.  This video was censored by YouTube due to its content.



"Burnin' an Lootin" by Bob Marley.  Video is the beginning of "La Haine" ("The Hatred"), written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995.  Subtitles in Spanish.


Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Notes:

1. N14: the November 14, 2012, general strike called by Spanish unions.
2. 31 Minutos is a Chilean mock news program anchored by puppets.  Triviño and Boduque are puppets on the show.
3. PRI = Institutional Revolution Party; PAN = rightwing National Action Party; PRD = center-left Democratic Revolution Party; PT = Workers' Party, a front for the PRI; MC = Movimiento Ciudadano, a PRD splinter party.  Marcos mentions all of the major political parties, even the so-called leftist parties, because the Zapatistas oppose all of them.  The PRD ruled Chiapas for years, and during that time the government and PRD party members attacked the Zapatistas (frequently physically) just as the other parties had done.

Read the rest of "Them and Us:"

• Part 1: The (Lack of) Reason from Above
• Part 2: The Machine in Almost Two Pages
• Part 3: The Overseers

The Tenacious Zapatista Persistence

by Raúl Zibechi
translated by Kristin Bricker

The Zapatista communities' mobilization on December 21 and the Zapatista National Liberation Army's (EZLN's) three communiques on the 30th of the same month were received with joy and hope by many anti-systemic and anti-capitalist movements in Latin America. Immediately, these movements' media outlets reflected on the importance of the mass mobilization, which comes during a difficult moment for those who are still determined to resist the system of death that misgoverns us.

These past years have been especially complicated for movements that are determined to build a new world from below.  In most South American countries, repression of popular sectors has not ceased, despite the fact that the majority of the governments call themselves progressive.  The have implemented a set of "social policies" designed, according to them, to "combat poverty," but in reality they seek to impede poor peoples' autonomous organization or to neutralize it when it has already reached a certain grade of development.

Progressive social policies, as demonstrated by the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, amongst others, have not managed to reduce inequality, nor redistribute wealth, nor carry out structural reforms, but they have been very effective when it comes to dividing popular organizations and in not a few cases detour the struggle's aims towards secondary issues.  They haven't touched land ownership and other means of production.  Social policies seek to mitigate the effects of accumulation by dispossession without modifying the policies that sustain this model: open-pit mining, monoculture, hydroelectric dams, and large infrastructure projects.

With the exception of Chile and Peru, where the student movement and mining resistance remain alive, in the majority of the countries the initiative has been passed on to the governments, anti-systemic movements are weaker and more isolated, and we have lost strategic goals.  Ever since formidable offensives against neoliberal privatization were launched, urban territorial work has found itself in an alley with a difficult short-term exit since ministries of social development, of solidarity economics and others have begun to infiltrate territories of resistance with programs that range from monetary transfers to poor families to various "support" for productive undertakings.  Initially, the movements receive this support with the hope of growing stronger, but after a short while they see how it spreads demoralization and disintegration in their ranks.

What is a grassroots collective to do when it builds a popular high school in a neighborhood, with great sacrifice based in collective work, when it sees how quickly the Government creates another high school in the area with better infrastructure and identical courses, and it even names it after known revolutionaries?  The answer is that we don't know.  We still haven't learned to work in territories that were once ours and are now spaces invaded by legions of workers and social workers with very progressive--and even radical--discourses, but who work for those above.

Zapatismo has grown stronger throughout this policy of military and "social" blockade and annihilation, where the State thoroughly dedicated itself to division through material "aid" as a complement to military and paramilitary campaigns.  That is why many of us received the December 21 mobilization with great joy.  Not because we suspected that they were no longer there, something that only those who listen to the media can believe, but rather because we proved that it is possible to go through the hell of military aggression combined with social counterinsurgency policies.  To know, study, and understand the Zapatista experience is more urgent than ever for those of us who live under the progressive model.

It is true that progressivism plays a positive role regarding the Yankee domination in that it seeks a certain autonomy for a local and regional capitalist development.  Faced with anti-systemic movements, however, those that try to follow the path of social democracy do not differentiate themselves at all from previous governments.  It is necessary to understand the duality within a single model: the progressive collision with Washington's interests but within the same logic of accumulation by dispossession.  In the strictest sense it has to do with a dispute between those who are the beneficiaries of the exploitation and oppression of those below, a role in which the local bourgeoisie and the administrators of the "leftist" parties allied with certain business unionism, claim part of the spoils.

The Zapatista journey leaves some lessons for the movements and the people who live "blockaded" by progressivism.

In the first place, the importance of militant commitment, the strength of values and principles, of not selling oneself out nor giving up despite how strong and powerful the enemy might appear and despite how isolated and weak the anti-systemic movements might be at a given moment.

Second, the necessity of following what one believes and thinking beyond immediate results, supposed successes or momentary failures, in contexts that are often fabricated by the media.  Persisting in the creation of movements that are neither institutionalized nor prisoners to electoral timeframes is the only way to build strongly and long term.

Third, the importance of a different way of doing politics, without which there would be nothing beyond what which is media, institutional, or electoral.  An intense debate exists in not a few South American movements about the benefit of participating in elections or of institutionalizing themselves in various forms as a way of avoiding the isolation from territorial work and to enter into "real" politics.  The Zapatistas show us that there are other ways of doing politics that don't revolve around the occupation of the State's institutions and that consist in creating, down below, forms of making collective decisions, producing and reproducing our lives based in "governing by obeying."  This political culture is not adequate for those who try to use the common people as ladders for individual aspirations.  That's why so many politicians and intellectuals within the system reject those new forms, within which they must subordinate themselves to the collective.

Fourth, autonomy as a strategic aim and as a daily practice.  Thanks to the way in which the communities resolve their necessities, we have learned that autonomy cannot just be a declaration of intentions (as valuable as that might be) but rather it must be based in material autonomy, from food and health to education and the form of decision-making, that is, the form of governing ourselves.

Over the past few years we have seen experiences inspired by Zapatismo outside of Chiapas, including in some cities, which demonstrates that this is not about a political culture that is only valid in indigenous communities in that Mexican state.


Raúl Zibechi is a radio and print journalist, writer, and political theorist from Uruguay.

Don't We Know Them? - Letter by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO.

December 29, 2012.

To whom it may concern up there above:

They think they are on the winning side ...
and so aside from being traitors, they are idiots.
Tyrion Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire. Volume II:
"Clash of Kings". George R. R. Martin.

" - A reader lives a thousand lives before dying – said Jojen. -
One who never reads only lives one "
Reed Jojen Song of Ice and Fire. Volume V: "Dance Dragons ". George R. R. Martin. (Reed Jojen appears in the third season of the HBO series "Games of Thrones". The character will be played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster. Note provided by Marquitos Spoil).

-If someone draws a target on their chest
-Tyrion said after sitting down and taking a sip of wine-
they need to be aware that sooner or later they will be shot at with arrows.

-We all need to make fun of ourselves from time to time, Lord Mormont  -Tyrion replied shruging his shoulders - Otherwise, we begin to take ourselves too seriously.

Tyrion Lannister with the controls of the Night's Watch. In "Song of
Ice and Fire ", Volume I:" Game of Thrones ".

"An end to the handsome / it’s better to be ugly but tasty / than to be handsome and slimy"
Botellita de Jerez.

Ladies and gentlemen??

When we saw the news we thought it was a December 28^th  practical joke, but we saw it was dated the 24th of the same month.

So, do we know them? Hmm ... hmm ... let's see:

Enrique Peña Nieto. Was he not born in Atlacomulco, Mexico State? Is he not the relative of Alfredo del Mazo and Arturo "long hands" Montiel?

Was he not the one who ruled, with the collusion of the PRD municipal government of Texcoco, during the eviction of the florists and the arrest of the leader of the People's Front in Defense of the Land, Ignacio del Valle, in May 2006?

Was he not the one who launched his attack dog and criminal, Wilfrido Robledo Madrid, to attack the town of San Salvador Atenco and ordered his police to sexually assault women? Was he not the mastermind behind the murder of Javier Cortes and Alexis Benhumea? Did the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation not rule that the three levels of government (note: federal government: PAN, state government: PRI, municipal government: PRD) committed serious violations of the population’s individual rights?

Is he not the one who made a tragic mockery of the case of the Paulette girl, better known as "the case of the mattress murderer"?

Is he not the one who bragged about police violence in San Salvador Atenco and with an arrogant attitude, forgetting that he was in front of young critics rather than a television set from his command post located in the bathroom of the Ibero, ordered the defamation of the dissenters that set off the student-youth movement later known as # yosoy132?

Is he not the one who, with his first act of governance and with the collusion of the PRD government in Mexico City, ordered the repression of demonstrators on December 1^st of this year, which resulted in the arrest, torture, and imprisonment of innocent people?

Is he not the one who couldn’t  read well, not even with a teleprompter accompanying him, even before the media coup of July 1, 2012?

Is he not the one who now wants to hide behind the skirts of the alleged relatives of the repeatedly deceased, as if it were a crappy soap opera?

Hey, and while we’re talking about soap operas, what will be the fashion for the next six years? I mean, with Echeverría it was the guayabera; with Lopez Portillo, the aguas frescas; with De la Madrid, a gray rat; with Salinas de Gortari, Prozac; with Zedillo, bad jokes; with Fox, wisecracks; with Calderon, blood ... and Peña Nieto?? "True love"? Wooo ... for sure.

Ok, sorry, let us continue with our ignorance:

Emilio Chuayffet Chemor. Was he not Enrique Peña Nieto’s boss and his "teacher"? Was he not Ernesto Zedillo’s Interior Minister? Was he not the drunkard who, in 1996, told the federal government and the COCOPA that he accepted their bill and then later and hungover retracted? Was he not one of the masterminds of the  Acteal massacre in December 1997? Was he not the one that tried to impose the  "flirty pompadours" trend amongst the PRI and the only one who supported him was his then-pupil Enrique Peña Nieto?

Pedro Joaquin Coldwell. Was he not the government commissioner for peace in Chiapas when the Acteal massacre occurred who remained silent and continued to get paid by doing nothing?

Rosario Robles Berlanga. Was she not the head of government of Mexico City for the PRD? Did she not boast about the repression that her police committed several times against young students during the UNAM strike in 1999-2000? Is she not the one, while presiding over the PRD, who sold her party in every way? Is she not the one now in charge of the fight against the corporatism of the Bejaranos in Mexico City and throughout the republic?

Alfonso Navarrete Prida. Was he not the first who covered up the organized crime score-settling that resulted in the murder of Enrique Salinas de Gortari (psss, you guys don’t really get along, do you?) and then exonerated Arturo "long hands" Montiel?

Miguel Angel Osorio Chong. Was he not accused of diverting government funds to the PRI? Did the [Attorney General’s Office]PGR not open  criminal investigation PGR/SIEDO/UEIDORPIFAM/185/2010 to investigate his ties to the criminal organization "Los Zetas"? (Oh, change of strategy in the war on drugs?)

(Oops, I see now that one of the brothers of the undersecretary of Migration, Population, and Religious Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, which Mr. Osorio Chong heads, has not one but several criminal  investigations. Several of them have the stamp "closed due to death of the accused ", then another stamp "was never dead”, and then another "well it turns out he is really dead" and so ... um ... 18 times. The last stamp "there goes the condemned" is dated on December 21, 2012, and a handwritten note says "pending activation, await instructions from CSG." ... hmm ... what would those initials stand for? Did they change the abbreviation for the Attorney General’s Office from PGR? Anyway , let the guy from Tampico know, ok?).

Ok sure, you all will tell me that these people are not in charge, but instead it is actually Carlos Salinas de Gortari who dictates what Enrique Peña Nieto does (ah, what would become of this country if the teleprompter were not invented?).

Ok, ok, ok. Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Is he not the one who plundered like no other the national wealth during his administration? (Yes, I know they are all thieves, but let's say there are amateurs and professionals). Is he not the one who devastated the Mexican countryside with the reforms to the Constitution’s Article 27? Is he not the one whose New Years toast we ruined in the dawn of 1994? Was he not the one who saw his dictatorial dreams shattered by wooden rifles? Was he not the one who ordered the assassination of Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta? Was he not the one who looked ridiculous with his hunger strike in 1995? Or the one who, on December 21, frantically asked for the red phone: "What did they say, what did they say?" And who felt a chill in his back when they told him, "nothing, they are in absolute silence"?

Are you all not the ones who have always chosen violence over dialogue?

The ones who always use force when there is no reason?

The ones who pioneered corruption and contempt in all the political parties?

Are you all not those who have refused to comply with the San Andrés Accords that would mean the constitutional recognition of indigenous rights and culture, and an end to evictions disguised as mining, water, dam, resort, road, and subdivision projects?

Are you not the ones who, along with your friends in the political class, resemble those security advisers in large buildings, trying to convince the tenants of the middle floors, and high penthouse, that there is no danger while you dynamite the lower floors, the ground floor and the basement? By the way, does anyone believe them?

You, who have killed me so many times, declared me dead, extinct, defunct, deceased, disappeared, beaten, defeated, surrendered, bought, annihilated, do you think anyone will believe you when I truly, as in love, body, and soul am delivered to death and am just a little bit more earth on this globe?

If you have answered "no" to any of the questions, then you are right: we do not know you.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante Marcos.
Mexico, December 2012.

P.S. Who repeats. - I know you already know this, but you should remember: we're not afraid. Oh, and we're not alone.

P.S. WHO GENEROUSLY OFFERS THE BAD GOVERNMENTS A 10 STEP MANUAL (note: easy read, do not be frightened), ON HOW TO IDENTIFY A ZAPATISTA AND TO KNOW IF THEY DO OR DO NOT “HAVE CONTACT WITH THE EZLN”:

1. - If they ask for money or projects from any of the 3 levels of government, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
2. - If they establish a direct line of communication without announcing it publicly beforehand, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
3. - If they ask to speak or are speaking directly with any of the three levels of government without announcing it publicly beforehand, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
4. - If they want an elevated position, appointment, honors, awards, etc.., THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
5. - If they are afraid, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
6. - If they sell out, surrender or falter, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
7. - If they take themselves very seriously, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
8. - If they do not cause chills when being seen, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA
9. - If they do not give the impression that they say more with their silence then they ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.
10. - If they are a ghost of those that fade, THEY ARE NOT ZAPATISTA.

P.S. APOLOGIES. - Oh, I know you expected something more serious and formal. But isn’t the style and tone of this "proof of life" letter better than a photo or video, and it’s even signed?

P.P.S . I LEAVE YOU WITH A HAIKU WRITTEN BY MARIO BENEDETTI TO SUPMARCOS: "I do not want to see you / for the rest of the year / or till Tuesday."

Translation: Clayton Conn
Original in Spanish posted here