Today is our last day in Ciudad Juarez. I was going to write a long piece about our stay here, and the reality of the neighborhood, which they call the “maquila dormitories” for the umber of residents here who work in the sweatshops on the border, and I still might write that, but first a story from last night.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day in Mexico. In the house that I am staying in we had a small Mother’s Day celebration, and then the family went out to spend the day with with my host mother’s sister, whose birthday it was. They spent the day at the cemetery remembering their other sister, who passed away three weeks ago, and then came back to their house for a party.
By about ten o’clock there were thirty or so children and adults, some feeling the effects of a long day of drinking, dancing to reggaton in the front yard. Suddenly a noise like firecrackers was heard over the music. We looked down into the street and saw a few men and boys running and diving for cover, as more and more shots were fired. All at the same time people stopped dancing, turned off the music, and herded the frightened children inside. As I started for the door I saw two kids, maybe fifteen, run down the street and hide behind the car maybe twenty feet from me, apparently the targets of the shooting. In the middle of the street a man was walking cautiously holding a rifle.
We went inside and tried to console the children, most under the age of ten, who were crying and asking where their parents were. There were a few more bursts of gunfire. After a few more minutes, everybody slowly filed back outside. Eventually the music came back on, but nobody started dancing. There was a fifteen year-old girl who lived in the house and was dating one of the gang members who owned a rifle, and people wondered quietly if he had been involved. I asked my sixteen year old host brother if he knew what had happened, and he made the gun-firing motion, shrugged his shoulders, and said “It happens almost every day.” Although from what I have heard from the adults in the neighborhood this is a slight exaggeration, The disaffected way in which he talked about it struck me.
After an hour or two, the adults had had enough time and Carta Blanca to forget about the event, and a raucous dance circle started up again. Nobody talked about it for the rest of the night.
Monday, October 29, 2007
DF
After Toluca, and a week of the best food I have ever eaten in my life, we headed to DF for a week. DF is a city collapsing under its own weight, literally. Due partially to the fact that it was built on a swamp, and partly because they continue to pump all of the water out from under the city, there are parts of the city that have sunk thirty feet in the last half century. From our hostel roof in the zocalo, you could look down rows of ancient streets and see the parapets of the buildings, which were once even, waving up and down like hills.
Besides that, DF is a choking place. Even though we were there during semana santa (easter week), which is less congested than any other week of the year (a local newspaper said it was a “sin” to not travel during the vacation) it was still the most overcrowded and polluted place I have been (which, admittedly, isn’t a long list). Due to the steady economic decline and concurrent globalization of the last twelve years in Mexico, the commerce has moved out onto the streets, and most of the thoroughfares in the center of the city are clogged with makeshift shops selling every pirated object that has ever been made, from hats to backpacks to phones to movies and stereos (such brand names as SOONY), and the stalls have become so many that cars don’t even attempt to drive down many of the streets.
On Monday morning most us got on a bus bound for Cuautla in the neighboring state of Morelos. Monday was the anniversary of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican Revolution. Not only was his assassination the result of a betrayal, the revolution ended up being a betrayal, too: It ushered in the birth of the PRI, the world’s longest living democratic one-party rule. This was a good backdrop for our purpose of going to Cuautla, which was to see La Otra Campana. La Otra is, of course, run by the Zapatistas, who unlike the PRI still fight for the same things as their namesake did some eighty years ago. The caravan of Subcomante Marcos and the entourage of Zapatistas that travels through Mexicowith him was to arrive in Cuautla, the site of Zapata’s tomb, at four in the afternoon to address the public.
My friends and I showed up around noon and explored the small town. It is a classic medium-sized Mexcan town, with a tree-lined plaza surrounded by small congested streets where the businesses spill out into the streets, with the sounds of nortena or banda music from one store mixing with the reggaton of another. At the smaller public square where Zapata lies entombed the local activists, communists, and other anti-government dissidents were setting up their banners and tables in preparation. On the side of the square a man with a microphone duct-taped to an acoustic guitar sang revolutionary songs.
Over the next few hours the square began to fill up. The highlight was when the Frente de Atenco showed up. The frente is a famously anti-government leftist group that won a major battle a few years ago fighting the installation of an airport in their community- They have also become famous for bringing their machetes with them to protests, and true to form when they showed up in Cuautla, at least fifty strong, they were chanting “Zapata Vive!” and waving their machetes in the air.
After a few hours, it became clear that there was some sort of hitch in the schedule. A fiend of ours had come by to tell us that there was some sort of problem involving the Zapatistas in the town of Cuernavaca that they were coming from. Suddenly all of the Frente from Atenco got back on their buses and took off. We waited around a few more hours until we heard that they were definitely not coming. We got back on the bus and headed to DF, and when we arrived we learned that Marcos had decided to aid in a protest of the construction of a shopping mall. It seems that it would have involved cutting down some old growth trees, so some local environmental activists had chained themselves to the trees in advance of the oncoming bulldozers. Apparently the police had arrived to forcibly remove the protests, but when the Zapatistas and their media contingent showed up, the police retreated. We were happy to hear about another small victory for the Other Campaign, but still disappointed it couldn’t have come on another day. To read about that protest, check the NarcoNews website.
After another week of red eyed and sore throats from the pollution, we all packed up and headed to Chihuahua City, the capitol of the state. Northern Mexico is remarkably different from the south. There is none of the European influence of San Cristobal or visibility of the indigenous population. Chihuahua city, for example, could easily pass for a town in Texas, with old men in cowboy hats ambling down the wide streets.
Our host group this time was a group called Barzon, which was a debtor’s organization that sprang up after the peso crisis of 1994. Apparently when the bottom fell out of the peso, anyone who had debt, for a mortgage or credit card, for example, suddenly found their interest shooting up to unimaginably, and saw their payments increase up to 300 percent. As a result they decided to band together and help each other not only renegotiate their debt with the banks, but also put a stop to all of the evictions. Our host mother told us stories of the first few eviction protests she went to, including one where the head of the organization, after being chased by the police, barricaded himself in the kitchen of the house that was being evicted, turned on the gas all the way, and threatened to blow the house up if the police didn’t leave. Amazingly, the police relented and the family eventually got to keep their house.
Another movement that we were studying in was for justice for the victims of the femicides. Although it is far too long and tragic of a story to recount entirely here, the basic nature of it is that over the last decade an inexplicably high number of women, mostly poor and young, have turned up missing in Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez. Many have later turned up, a number mutilated, dumped in the desert on the edge of town. A number of conspiracy theories have been tossed around, including theories that the police, drug lords, local politicians, and other members of high society have been involved in some sort of sex slave trade. There is no evidence to any of these claims, however, because the police more or less refuse to investigate into the hundreds of disappearances, which only fuels the speculation.
On the Thursday of that week we went to to the state penitentiary to visit David Mesa who was imprisoned for the death of his cousin. David had been a human rights activist in Los Angeles, and when he heard that his cousin had disappeared, he went back to Chihuahua to investigate. Apparently he asked one too many questions, and he and his uncle, the mother of the victim, were thrown in jail. David Mesa has been in jail, with no evidence except for his confession extracted by three days of torture, for three years. It apparently doesn’t matter to the court that he was well-known to have been in Los Angeles at the time of the murder. Even the New York Times has written about his plight, but the state has still refused to set him free. Despite his situation, he remains cheerful and smiling. He talks with sadness I his voice, but more with hope and gratitude. He thanked us for coming to visit, telling us that if he ever did make it out of jail, it would be because of the support given to him by groups like ours. We, of course, had little to feel proud of, but were happy to see a man that the state has tried so hard to break still talking about justice and dignity. David is still awaiting the final decision in the case, which is expected to be heard sometime in May.
Besides that, DF is a choking place. Even though we were there during semana santa (easter week), which is less congested than any other week of the year (a local newspaper said it was a “sin” to not travel during the vacation) it was still the most overcrowded and polluted place I have been (which, admittedly, isn’t a long list). Due to the steady economic decline and concurrent globalization of the last twelve years in Mexico, the commerce has moved out onto the streets, and most of the thoroughfares in the center of the city are clogged with makeshift shops selling every pirated object that has ever been made, from hats to backpacks to phones to movies and stereos (such brand names as SOONY), and the stalls have become so many that cars don’t even attempt to drive down many of the streets.
On Monday morning most us got on a bus bound for Cuautla in the neighboring state of Morelos. Monday was the anniversary of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican Revolution. Not only was his assassination the result of a betrayal, the revolution ended up being a betrayal, too: It ushered in the birth of the PRI, the world’s longest living democratic one-party rule. This was a good backdrop for our purpose of going to Cuautla, which was to see La Otra Campana. La Otra is, of course, run by the Zapatistas, who unlike the PRI still fight for the same things as their namesake did some eighty years ago. The caravan of Subcomante Marcos and the entourage of Zapatistas that travels through Mexicowith him was to arrive in Cuautla, the site of Zapata’s tomb, at four in the afternoon to address the public.
My friends and I showed up around noon and explored the small town. It is a classic medium-sized Mexcan town, with a tree-lined plaza surrounded by small congested streets where the businesses spill out into the streets, with the sounds of nortena or banda music from one store mixing with the reggaton of another. At the smaller public square where Zapata lies entombed the local activists, communists, and other anti-government dissidents were setting up their banners and tables in preparation. On the side of the square a man with a microphone duct-taped to an acoustic guitar sang revolutionary songs.
Over the next few hours the square began to fill up. The highlight was when the Frente de Atenco showed up. The frente is a famously anti-government leftist group that won a major battle a few years ago fighting the installation of an airport in their community- They have also become famous for bringing their machetes with them to protests, and true to form when they showed up in Cuautla, at least fifty strong, they were chanting “Zapata Vive!” and waving their machetes in the air.
After a few hours, it became clear that there was some sort of hitch in the schedule. A fiend of ours had come by to tell us that there was some sort of problem involving the Zapatistas in the town of Cuernavaca that they were coming from. Suddenly all of the Frente from Atenco got back on their buses and took off. We waited around a few more hours until we heard that they were definitely not coming. We got back on the bus and headed to DF, and when we arrived we learned that Marcos had decided to aid in a protest of the construction of a shopping mall. It seems that it would have involved cutting down some old growth trees, so some local environmental activists had chained themselves to the trees in advance of the oncoming bulldozers. Apparently the police had arrived to forcibly remove the protests, but when the Zapatistas and their media contingent showed up, the police retreated. We were happy to hear about another small victory for the Other Campaign, but still disappointed it couldn’t have come on another day. To read about that protest, check the NarcoNews website.
After another week of red eyed and sore throats from the pollution, we all packed up and headed to Chihuahua City, the capitol of the state. Northern Mexico is remarkably different from the south. There is none of the European influence of San Cristobal or visibility of the indigenous population. Chihuahua city, for example, could easily pass for a town in Texas, with old men in cowboy hats ambling down the wide streets.
Our host group this time was a group called Barzon, which was a debtor’s organization that sprang up after the peso crisis of 1994. Apparently when the bottom fell out of the peso, anyone who had debt, for a mortgage or credit card, for example, suddenly found their interest shooting up to unimaginably, and saw their payments increase up to 300 percent. As a result they decided to band together and help each other not only renegotiate their debt with the banks, but also put a stop to all of the evictions. Our host mother told us stories of the first few eviction protests she went to, including one where the head of the organization, after being chased by the police, barricaded himself in the kitchen of the house that was being evicted, turned on the gas all the way, and threatened to blow the house up if the police didn’t leave. Amazingly, the police relented and the family eventually got to keep their house.
Another movement that we were studying in was for justice for the victims of the femicides. Although it is far too long and tragic of a story to recount entirely here, the basic nature of it is that over the last decade an inexplicably high number of women, mostly poor and young, have turned up missing in Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez. Many have later turned up, a number mutilated, dumped in the desert on the edge of town. A number of conspiracy theories have been tossed around, including theories that the police, drug lords, local politicians, and other members of high society have been involved in some sort of sex slave trade. There is no evidence to any of these claims, however, because the police more or less refuse to investigate into the hundreds of disappearances, which only fuels the speculation.
On the Thursday of that week we went to to the state penitentiary to visit David Mesa who was imprisoned for the death of his cousin. David had been a human rights activist in Los Angeles, and when he heard that his cousin had disappeared, he went back to Chihuahua to investigate. Apparently he asked one too many questions, and he and his uncle, the mother of the victim, were thrown in jail. David Mesa has been in jail, with no evidence except for his confession extracted by three days of torture, for three years. It apparently doesn’t matter to the court that he was well-known to have been in Los Angeles at the time of the murder. Even the New York Times has written about his plight, but the state has still refused to set him free. Despite his situation, he remains cheerful and smiling. He talks with sadness I his voice, but more with hope and gratitude. He thanked us for coming to visit, telling us that if he ever did make it out of jail, it would be because of the support given to him by groups like ours. We, of course, had little to feel proud of, but were happy to see a man that the state has tried so hard to break still talking about justice and dignity. David is still awaiting the final decision in the case, which is expected to be heard sometime in May.
Old Mexico
We arrived in Toluca de Guadalupe, a small town in the state of Tlaxcala, on Sunday evening. Toluca is possibly the most stereotypical Old Mexico type place I have seen. It is a town of two thousand or so that was formed some seventy years ago, and is built around a classic small plaza across the street from the Cathedral, which looks much older than its seventy five years. Besides the area in the center of town around the plaza, much of the town is dirt roads that wander over the hills. At anytime of day it isn’t uncommon to see an old campesino man and his son herding their cattle or sheep down the middle of the street, at a pace that is telling of mood of the town.
Members of the town describe it as tranquil, with a hint of pride in doing so. Many of them no doubt treasure this aspect of Toluca because of their first-hand knowledge of the megalopolis three hours to their west. It was explained to me that a large portion of the men in the town, perhaps a quarter or more, work in DF, making the drive early on Monday morning, and then sleeping at the job site every night until Friday, when they return for a short weekend with their families.
A hard part of staying in a place like Toluca is seeing a classic way of life, simple farming and commerce, and a strong family unit, that still can’t function under the modern capitalist sytem. The people are hard working, innovative, and honest, and yet there is no recourse for the men of the town but to spend almost three quarters of the year away from their families.
Our reception was at the local offices of the Congreso Nacional Urbano de Campesinos. This is a group with offices all over the state of Tlaxcala, a small state to the East of Mexico City. They are considered one of the most well-organized social movements of the region. While they are primarily a campesino rights organization, they also serve as a leftist umbrella group for such causes as the Bracero movement (a group of old men that were guest workers in the US in the sixties now demanding their pensions) to a sex worker group that formed to resist police repression.
I was welcomed by a sixty two year old grandmother named Piedad. She was the mother of eight and grandmother of twenty four. She seemed to be the matriarch of the town. Every time we walked down the road, any kid that passed by would come up and kiss her hand, after which she would explain in what circuitous way they were related.
The week passed quickly. Every day was full of different academic classes and workshops. One of the workshops was a talk in a crowded meeting room, where we heard testimony from twenty or so Braceros. The Braceros (from the Spansih word brazo, meaning arm) were guest workers in the US from 1942 until 1962. Not only did the guest workers receive horrible treatment from their employers, and often made less money than their illegal counterparts, they returned to Mexico only to find that their own government defrauded them. Ten percent of every paycheck was automatically deducted and put into a pension account that was handled by the Mexican government. When the time came to collect that pension, the Mexican government simply ignored them. Now there are thousands of Braceros across the country that have organized to demand their pensions. Judging by the looks of the group at the meeting, hopefully it will be resolved soon. Most Braceros are well into their seventies, and have endured a lifetime of brutal manual labor.
The next day we met with a group of sex workers in the nearby town of Apizaco. The sex workers had recently joined CNUC, after a long and heated debate among the CNUC members as to whether or not they should align themselves with prostitutes. Prostitution is legal in Mexico, but that does little to protect sex workers from police repression. The sex workers told us of their fight to retain dignity, their recent meeting with Subcomandante Marcos during the Other Campaign, and laughed outloud when one of the women of our group said that they didn't charge money for sex.
On the second to last day we went to the city of Tlaxcala, the state capitol. We broke up into small groups wandering the city and talking with random people. Our designated meeting place was the central plaza at noon. A friend and I were walking up to the plaza when we noticed a noisy procession coming down the street, complete with a beat up old truck with a loud speaker in the bed. As it got closer, we heard the popular chants of “Zapata vive, la lucha sigue!” (Zapata lives, the struggle continues) and “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” (the people united will never be defeated). It took some time of walking around and listening to the speeches to realize that it was a protest against the incarcelation of an environmental activist. It seems the state had had a plan to privatize a public lake that had strong significance to the local people, and had arrested on frivolous charges the man who had started a group challenging the action. It took us some more time to realize that we, as very noticeable gringos (we are both about six foot six), were in the middle of a very charged protest, and that probably wasn’t a good thing for us. We walked across the street and found Tom, the professor, nervously walking around trying to find the group and direct them down the street to the van. It made him no less nervous to be their with his wife, who he described as “one of the first people they would throw in jail if they decided to start locking up Zapatista sympathizers again.” When we got back to the van, several students confirmed that there had been a government agent diligently photographing our group. Tom himself was photographed at least twice. Without talking about the day, he drove eighty all the way back to Toluca.
Members of the town describe it as tranquil, with a hint of pride in doing so. Many of them no doubt treasure this aspect of Toluca because of their first-hand knowledge of the megalopolis three hours to their west. It was explained to me that a large portion of the men in the town, perhaps a quarter or more, work in DF, making the drive early on Monday morning, and then sleeping at the job site every night until Friday, when they return for a short weekend with their families.
A hard part of staying in a place like Toluca is seeing a classic way of life, simple farming and commerce, and a strong family unit, that still can’t function under the modern capitalist sytem. The people are hard working, innovative, and honest, and yet there is no recourse for the men of the town but to spend almost three quarters of the year away from their families.
Our reception was at the local offices of the Congreso Nacional Urbano de Campesinos. This is a group with offices all over the state of Tlaxcala, a small state to the East of Mexico City. They are considered one of the most well-organized social movements of the region. While they are primarily a campesino rights organization, they also serve as a leftist umbrella group for such causes as the Bracero movement (a group of old men that were guest workers in the US in the sixties now demanding their pensions) to a sex worker group that formed to resist police repression.
I was welcomed by a sixty two year old grandmother named Piedad. She was the mother of eight and grandmother of twenty four. She seemed to be the matriarch of the town. Every time we walked down the road, any kid that passed by would come up and kiss her hand, after which she would explain in what circuitous way they were related.
The week passed quickly. Every day was full of different academic classes and workshops. One of the workshops was a talk in a crowded meeting room, where we heard testimony from twenty or so Braceros. The Braceros (from the Spansih word brazo, meaning arm) were guest workers in the US from 1942 until 1962. Not only did the guest workers receive horrible treatment from their employers, and often made less money than their illegal counterparts, they returned to Mexico only to find that their own government defrauded them. Ten percent of every paycheck was automatically deducted and put into a pension account that was handled by the Mexican government. When the time came to collect that pension, the Mexican government simply ignored them. Now there are thousands of Braceros across the country that have organized to demand their pensions. Judging by the looks of the group at the meeting, hopefully it will be resolved soon. Most Braceros are well into their seventies, and have endured a lifetime of brutal manual labor.
The next day we met with a group of sex workers in the nearby town of Apizaco. The sex workers had recently joined CNUC, after a long and heated debate among the CNUC members as to whether or not they should align themselves with prostitutes. Prostitution is legal in Mexico, but that does little to protect sex workers from police repression. The sex workers told us of their fight to retain dignity, their recent meeting with Subcomandante Marcos during the Other Campaign, and laughed outloud when one of the women of our group said that they didn't charge money for sex.
On the second to last day we went to the city of Tlaxcala, the state capitol. We broke up into small groups wandering the city and talking with random people. Our designated meeting place was the central plaza at noon. A friend and I were walking up to the plaza when we noticed a noisy procession coming down the street, complete with a beat up old truck with a loud speaker in the bed. As it got closer, we heard the popular chants of “Zapata vive, la lucha sigue!” (Zapata lives, the struggle continues) and “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” (the people united will never be defeated). It took some time of walking around and listening to the speeches to realize that it was a protest against the incarcelation of an environmental activist. It seems the state had had a plan to privatize a public lake that had strong significance to the local people, and had arrested on frivolous charges the man who had started a group challenging the action. It took us some more time to realize that we, as very noticeable gringos (we are both about six foot six), were in the middle of a very charged protest, and that probably wasn’t a good thing for us. We walked across the street and found Tom, the professor, nervously walking around trying to find the group and direct them down the street to the van. It made him no less nervous to be their with his wife, who he described as “one of the first people they would throw in jail if they decided to start locking up Zapatista sympathizers again.” When we got back to the van, several students confirmed that there had been a government agent diligently photographing our group. Tom himself was photographed at least twice. Without talking about the day, he drove eighty all the way back to Toluca.
Oventic 2
We left Oventic last week. It has been an inspiring month. The class structure was that we had Spanish class five times a week, academic class twice (held in the Oventic café), and various activities throughout the week such as song night, where all of the group would get together with the five promoters and sing all of the revolutionary songs, like the Zapatista Hymn and De Colores.
Every Wednesday was a field trip of sorts. During the second week we visited Magdalena de la Paz, a local Zapatista Community. We happened to visit during a festival celebrating the patron saint f the town. These festivals are quite a spectacle. We walked around the town for an hour before lunch (the local junta insisted that we had to let them treat us to a lunch) and saw the various traditions. In one, local men dance around in a circle with all sorts of instruments and wearing all white clothing with ribbons of every color draped from their hats and sashes. This performance was punctuated by two very intoxicated men coming up o us and asking us who we were, and telling us how appy they were to receive us, and yet acting quite strange, and asking us over and over who we were there with and what we were doing. We found out later that only half of the town, at most, is Zapatista, and the other half, the Priistas, aren’t too happy with their presewnce. Apparently our two hosts were aware that most of the foreigners who visit the town are their to meet with the local Zapatista junta, which is a government that operates alongside the official Priista government.
Not long after this encounter we had the opportunity to meet with this Junta. All twenty of us piled into this simple yet brightly painted building, decorated inside with all sorts of Zapatista posters and hand written signs on cardboard reading “Democracia, Libertad, Justicia,” and illuminated by bare bulbs hanging from the open rafters. We were greeted by the whole junta, men and women of all ages, who represented all of the posts within the junta, and were welcomed with a traditional song on Mayan instruments, all twenty of us bouncing up and down and shaking maracas for what seemed like fifteen of the best minutes of my life. Every three or four minutes the song would stop, we would all look around, and for whatever reason the same song would start right back up again. This seemed so emblematic of the whole experience of interacting with the locals, where there seemed to be such a cultural divide that it was all we could do to grin and bear it and stop wondering why we never knew what was going on.
Our talk with the junta was another good example. The twenty of us were surrounded by the fifteen or so members of the junta, and we were told to give any questions we might have, so most of us managed to come up with one or two reasonably intelligent questions, which the junta dutifully wrote down and began to answer, but only after asking several times if we were sure we didn’t have more questions. There is, however, a particular style in which many of these questions are answered. First, the question is discussed in Tzotzil by the whole Junta, many of whom speak less Spanish than us. Then the spokesman answers, but in a very roundabout yet exhaustive manner.
Finally, after three hours of explication, we finished our original group of questions, and then the spokesperson began exhorting us to ask more questions, because that’s why they were there after all. However, more and more of his answers began to have references to our long-awaited lunch in them, and so finally Jennifer, one of the teachers, took this as a hint to stand up after another half hour of answers to suggest that we adjourn the meeting and go to lunch, upon which she instantly realized that she had not mastered the art of Mayan manners, as the spokesman looking totally insulted, apologized if he had wasted our time and begged us to forgive his long-windedness.
So then we went to lunch, which was served between to ramshackle huts a couple of blocks away, and we ate our soup with beef and tostadas as one of the junta members told us what a big deal it was to eat meat in this community, and how they normally have nothing more than some hot water with a bit of chile and lime in it, totally mortified that some members of the group had made a big deal out of the fact that their wasn’t a vegetarian option.
Luckily the next trip was much smoother. We visited another municipality, which was a last minute substitution for a visit to Polho. Polho is basically a refugee camp, home to some seven thousand displaced Chiapanecans who have been exiled from their communities, almost always by the local PRI government as retribution for their affiliation with the Zapatistas. They now live in this refugee camp, a sort of purgatory where they haven’t been able to start new lives, for the lack of land, but still feel they face to much repression to go back to their communities. To put it in perspective how much this affects the local communities, Oventic, as the local Zapatista center, containing all of the aforementioned programs like free healthcare and school, spends seventy percent of its budget every year supporting Polho. When the news came that we were not able to visit Polho, because of security concerns, we weren’t entirely sure if this was a bad thing. 16 de Febrero, the town we visited instead, is a serene little town at the base of the mountains where few speak Spanish, accessible only by foot, and they are just beginning to see what they can achieve themselves with the help of the Zapatistas. It was obviously not accustomed to foreigners, as everywhere we went there were local kids peering out from behind doorways and windows with their mouths agape. On a more personal note, 16 de Febrero’s most recent addition is a brown leather wallet, stuffed full of money and cards with the name Brodie Lewis emblazoned across them, tucked away somewhere in the dense foliage along the side of the road.
The day after this trip, we packed up our stuff, cleaned our little dormitories, and said good bye to the stray dogs and dog-sized spiders that had been our housemates, as well as the promoters, who informed us that they had wanted to come into San Cristobal with us, but had determined that the security risks didn’t warrant a frivolous trip into the city.
Living in a Zapatista community did a great deal to demystify Zapatismo to us, to show us the true faces of those fighting for something different, and to understand it without a veil of flowery language or romantic photographs. Interestingly, it did nothing to dissuade any of us from our adoration of the movement, and if anything all of us now feel a deeper truer connection to the movement having had this experience. There is a phrase that they use, caminar preguntando, which means, more or less, to ask questions along the way, to always question yourself, and your struggle. Seeing people who had dedicated their lives to struggle, such as the promoters who, while they have free room and board are provided with no other stipend, and have to ask the junta for things as small as toothbrushes and toothpaste, to see these people, so intimate with sacrifice, step back and actually listen to our questions and critiques, as a bunch of privileged american kids, was amazing. They internalize their ethics of rebellion to an extent that is almost unbelievable.
We are all sad to have to reenter the real world.
Every Wednesday was a field trip of sorts. During the second week we visited Magdalena de la Paz, a local Zapatista Community. We happened to visit during a festival celebrating the patron saint f the town. These festivals are quite a spectacle. We walked around the town for an hour before lunch (the local junta insisted that we had to let them treat us to a lunch) and saw the various traditions. In one, local men dance around in a circle with all sorts of instruments and wearing all white clothing with ribbons of every color draped from their hats and sashes. This performance was punctuated by two very intoxicated men coming up o us and asking us who we were, and telling us how appy they were to receive us, and yet acting quite strange, and asking us over and over who we were there with and what we were doing. We found out later that only half of the town, at most, is Zapatista, and the other half, the Priistas, aren’t too happy with their presewnce. Apparently our two hosts were aware that most of the foreigners who visit the town are their to meet with the local Zapatista junta, which is a government that operates alongside the official Priista government.
Not long after this encounter we had the opportunity to meet with this Junta. All twenty of us piled into this simple yet brightly painted building, decorated inside with all sorts of Zapatista posters and hand written signs on cardboard reading “Democracia, Libertad, Justicia,” and illuminated by bare bulbs hanging from the open rafters. We were greeted by the whole junta, men and women of all ages, who represented all of the posts within the junta, and were welcomed with a traditional song on Mayan instruments, all twenty of us bouncing up and down and shaking maracas for what seemed like fifteen of the best minutes of my life. Every three or four minutes the song would stop, we would all look around, and for whatever reason the same song would start right back up again. This seemed so emblematic of the whole experience of interacting with the locals, where there seemed to be such a cultural divide that it was all we could do to grin and bear it and stop wondering why we never knew what was going on.
Our talk with the junta was another good example. The twenty of us were surrounded by the fifteen or so members of the junta, and we were told to give any questions we might have, so most of us managed to come up with one or two reasonably intelligent questions, which the junta dutifully wrote down and began to answer, but only after asking several times if we were sure we didn’t have more questions. There is, however, a particular style in which many of these questions are answered. First, the question is discussed in Tzotzil by the whole Junta, many of whom speak less Spanish than us. Then the spokesman answers, but in a very roundabout yet exhaustive manner.
Finally, after three hours of explication, we finished our original group of questions, and then the spokesperson began exhorting us to ask more questions, because that’s why they were there after all. However, more and more of his answers began to have references to our long-awaited lunch in them, and so finally Jennifer, one of the teachers, took this as a hint to stand up after another half hour of answers to suggest that we adjourn the meeting and go to lunch, upon which she instantly realized that she had not mastered the art of Mayan manners, as the spokesman looking totally insulted, apologized if he had wasted our time and begged us to forgive his long-windedness.
So then we went to lunch, which was served between to ramshackle huts a couple of blocks away, and we ate our soup with beef and tostadas as one of the junta members told us what a big deal it was to eat meat in this community, and how they normally have nothing more than some hot water with a bit of chile and lime in it, totally mortified that some members of the group had made a big deal out of the fact that their wasn’t a vegetarian option.
Luckily the next trip was much smoother. We visited another municipality, which was a last minute substitution for a visit to Polho. Polho is basically a refugee camp, home to some seven thousand displaced Chiapanecans who have been exiled from their communities, almost always by the local PRI government as retribution for their affiliation with the Zapatistas. They now live in this refugee camp, a sort of purgatory where they haven’t been able to start new lives, for the lack of land, but still feel they face to much repression to go back to their communities. To put it in perspective how much this affects the local communities, Oventic, as the local Zapatista center, containing all of the aforementioned programs like free healthcare and school, spends seventy percent of its budget every year supporting Polho. When the news came that we were not able to visit Polho, because of security concerns, we weren’t entirely sure if this was a bad thing. 16 de Febrero, the town we visited instead, is a serene little town at the base of the mountains where few speak Spanish, accessible only by foot, and they are just beginning to see what they can achieve themselves with the help of the Zapatistas. It was obviously not accustomed to foreigners, as everywhere we went there were local kids peering out from behind doorways and windows with their mouths agape. On a more personal note, 16 de Febrero’s most recent addition is a brown leather wallet, stuffed full of money and cards with the name Brodie Lewis emblazoned across them, tucked away somewhere in the dense foliage along the side of the road.
The day after this trip, we packed up our stuff, cleaned our little dormitories, and said good bye to the stray dogs and dog-sized spiders that had been our housemates, as well as the promoters, who informed us that they had wanted to come into San Cristobal with us, but had determined that the security risks didn’t warrant a frivolous trip into the city.
Living in a Zapatista community did a great deal to demystify Zapatismo to us, to show us the true faces of those fighting for something different, and to understand it without a veil of flowery language or romantic photographs. Interestingly, it did nothing to dissuade any of us from our adoration of the movement, and if anything all of us now feel a deeper truer connection to the movement having had this experience. There is a phrase that they use, caminar preguntando, which means, more or less, to ask questions along the way, to always question yourself, and your struggle. Seeing people who had dedicated their lives to struggle, such as the promoters who, while they have free room and board are provided with no other stipend, and have to ask the junta for things as small as toothbrushes and toothpaste, to see these people, so intimate with sacrifice, step back and actually listen to our questions and critiques, as a bunch of privileged american kids, was amazing. They internalize their ethics of rebellion to an extent that is almost unbelievable.
We are all sad to have to reenter the real world.
Oventic
Being in Oventic is somewhat hard to explain. It is, as an understatement, unique. For example:
I am sitting with two local fifteen year old students, on a bench in a small wooden building, simply made and yet brightly decorated, with a mural on the outside and every sort of Zapatista and international peace solidarity poster on the inside, interviewing two men wearing ski masks about the history of Oventic. Having a serious conversation with two masked men is somewhat odd. The two men were representatives of the Commission for Explanation, and dutifully explained the history of the EZLN, including the caracoles.
The caracoles are five autonomous Zapatista community centers in rural areas of Chiapas, and provide the local communities with education, healthcare, a bodega for surplus goods for the communities, and various levels of coordination for cooperatives of people who sell artisanry and coffee. The caracoles (“snails”) were “born” on August ninth, 2003. I say “born” because there were already Zapatista centers there, but they were known as Aguascalientes. The first Aguascalientes was created in 1995, and was destroyed by the Mexican military shortly thereafter. In response, the Zapatistas built five more, and one of these five was Oventic. When the Zapatistas realized that the government would never live up to the promises of the accords they signed, they decided to build their own governments, called the Juntas Del Buen Gobierno, and alter the functions of the Aguascalientes to suit these needs.
The development here has been steady. Few could help not be amazed at what they have been able to do with this little bit of land, all donated by local people. In an area where most people live off of less than one dollar a day (a reality hard to imagine for many of us), they have constructed their own community center all from donated labor, as a part of the idea of cargo, wherein every community member has a mandate to engage in a public service. Hundreds of community members turned out and worked tirelessly to clear the land and build the center. With thirty or so buildings, a basketball court, an auditorium, a café, restaurant, clinic, two ambulances, and everything else, they have constructed their own reality, a way of giving the finger to the government, and say “fine, if our government won’t be for us, we will leave you, and we are too proud to beg for your table scraps.” To emphasize and give voice to their sentiments, there are revolutionary sayings emblazoned across many of the buildings, such as “Here, the people command and the government obeys,” and “A world where many worlds fit.”
Everywhere, on every building, are murals, and it is hard to ignore their effect on the mood. Everything seems so bright, and optimistic. And then, during Spanish class, there is a subtle reminder from one of the “promoters” (they choose not to call them teachers) during a history of military involvement in Chiapas, that the paramilitaries have never gone away, and there is the threat every day of incursion, however remote. According to one of the NGO activists we talked to, there was paramilitary activity two weeks ago in the northern part of the state, three wounded, one killed, one kidnapped.
For these reasons, and many others, things seem so real as to be surreal. That, and tonight as we walked through the center after dinner, we looked up and saw a half-full moon with an aura surrounding it twenty times its size, and the three of us agreed that we had never seen anything quite like it.
I am sitting with two local fifteen year old students, on a bench in a small wooden building, simply made and yet brightly decorated, with a mural on the outside and every sort of Zapatista and international peace solidarity poster on the inside, interviewing two men wearing ski masks about the history of Oventic. Having a serious conversation with two masked men is somewhat odd. The two men were representatives of the Commission for Explanation, and dutifully explained the history of the EZLN, including the caracoles.
The caracoles are five autonomous Zapatista community centers in rural areas of Chiapas, and provide the local communities with education, healthcare, a bodega for surplus goods for the communities, and various levels of coordination for cooperatives of people who sell artisanry and coffee. The caracoles (“snails”) were “born” on August ninth, 2003. I say “born” because there were already Zapatista centers there, but they were known as Aguascalientes. The first Aguascalientes was created in 1995, and was destroyed by the Mexican military shortly thereafter. In response, the Zapatistas built five more, and one of these five was Oventic. When the Zapatistas realized that the government would never live up to the promises of the accords they signed, they decided to build their own governments, called the Juntas Del Buen Gobierno, and alter the functions of the Aguascalientes to suit these needs.
The development here has been steady. Few could help not be amazed at what they have been able to do with this little bit of land, all donated by local people. In an area where most people live off of less than one dollar a day (a reality hard to imagine for many of us), they have constructed their own community center all from donated labor, as a part of the idea of cargo, wherein every community member has a mandate to engage in a public service. Hundreds of community members turned out and worked tirelessly to clear the land and build the center. With thirty or so buildings, a basketball court, an auditorium, a café, restaurant, clinic, two ambulances, and everything else, they have constructed their own reality, a way of giving the finger to the government, and say “fine, if our government won’t be for us, we will leave you, and we are too proud to beg for your table scraps.” To emphasize and give voice to their sentiments, there are revolutionary sayings emblazoned across many of the buildings, such as “Here, the people command and the government obeys,” and “A world where many worlds fit.”
Everywhere, on every building, are murals, and it is hard to ignore their effect on the mood. Everything seems so bright, and optimistic. And then, during Spanish class, there is a subtle reminder from one of the “promoters” (they choose not to call them teachers) during a history of military involvement in Chiapas, that the paramilitaries have never gone away, and there is the threat every day of incursion, however remote. According to one of the NGO activists we talked to, there was paramilitary activity two weeks ago in the northern part of the state, three wounded, one killed, one kidnapped.
For these reasons, and many others, things seem so real as to be surreal. That, and tonight as we walked through the center after dinner, we looked up and saw a half-full moon with an aura surrounding it twenty times its size, and the three of us agreed that we had never seen anything quite like it.
San Cristobal 2
I woke up yesterday morning and started checking up on the news. One of my favorite pages for this is Narconews (www.narconews.com), which started out as a news site monitoring the drug wars in Latin America, but have since grown to include everything from US meddling in elections to the Zapatista movement. On their Otro Periodismo page, there was a story about a well known local activist, Damaso Villanueva, who it appears was arrested on Friday morning.
Villanueva set up an information booth about the Zapatistas in front of the church in the main square (the same church that local elites protested because of Priest Samuel Ruiz’s support for the Zaps) in 1995, and for eleven years has been selling magazines, posters, and CDs about the EZLN, as well as dispensing free information to passersby. On Friday morning, as he was setting up his booth, and the soldiers were conducting their military procedures across the street, three police officers grabbed Damaso and threw him into the back of a squad car.
The charges, which had to be wrested out of the police by local activists, assert that Damaso had something to do with toppling a cell phone tower two years ago. Apparently this is somewhat common in certain neighborhoods around here (maybe having something to do with people not wanting their kids to get cancer).
I asked Tom about the arrest, and he explained that it is common procedure in México for the police to issue an arrest warrant, and then not exercise it, so they can hang something over the heads of political types in order to keep them in line. Damaso, for instance, had his issued two years ago, and has been in public every day since then, but it wasn’t until the other campaign had begun to heat up that the police decided to move.
Damaso is not alone, of course. Activists and supporters of la otra across the country have been arrested or harassed by the police for their support. Some of them have been freed by means of mass protests in front of the jails, but Damaso hasn’t been so lucky.
I asked Tom why he didn’t tell the group, and organize some sort of field trip to the jail to protest.
“Because that’s how I got expelled from the country.”
Point taken.
Villanueva set up an information booth about the Zapatistas in front of the church in the main square (the same church that local elites protested because of Priest Samuel Ruiz’s support for the Zaps) in 1995, and for eleven years has been selling magazines, posters, and CDs about the EZLN, as well as dispensing free information to passersby. On Friday morning, as he was setting up his booth, and the soldiers were conducting their military procedures across the street, three police officers grabbed Damaso and threw him into the back of a squad car.
The charges, which had to be wrested out of the police by local activists, assert that Damaso had something to do with toppling a cell phone tower two years ago. Apparently this is somewhat common in certain neighborhoods around here (maybe having something to do with people not wanting their kids to get cancer).
I asked Tom about the arrest, and he explained that it is common procedure in México for the police to issue an arrest warrant, and then not exercise it, so they can hang something over the heads of political types in order to keep them in line. Damaso, for instance, had his issued two years ago, and has been in public every day since then, but it wasn’t until the other campaign had begun to heat up that the police decided to move.
Damaso is not alone, of course. Activists and supporters of la otra across the country have been arrested or harassed by the police for their support. Some of them have been freed by means of mass protests in front of the jails, but Damaso hasn’t been so lucky.
I asked Tom why he didn’t tell the group, and organize some sort of field trip to the jail to protest.
“Because that’s how I got expelled from the country.”
Point taken.
San Cristobal
So, a funny little story about politics in Mexico.
My friend Danielle and I are doing a project about local politics in San Cristobal, exploring the reasons why a town so central in the Zapatista uprising is still so conservative, and hardline PRIista. But enough about that. One of the interviews that we wanted to do was with a representative of the PRD, the leftist party that I have referenced before.
When we went to try and see a spokesman at noon, they told us no one comes in before five or six. Alright. So we went back at 7:30, and sure enough, the office was full of people. The people at the front were very nice, and promised us an interview very soon. So we sat down, and starting shooting the breeze with Misael, a young volunteer who was manning the front desk. Seeing as he had nothing to do, and we were just waiting, we started a long conversation (at least half an hour) about how he was an architecture student, and wanted to visit the US once he learned English, and was Presbyterian, etc.
So we asked him what he liked about Lopez Obrador, or AMLO as he is known.
“Yeah, I like him. He’s changing politics, you know? He’s trying to end corruption, and all of the scandals, and that’s good. I’m actually a PRIista, but don’t tell anyone. But he used to be from the PRI, and now he’s with the PRD because of all the corruption, and so I volunteer when I can.”
So we talked a bit more about AMLO, and the plot by the ruling parties to have him thrown in jail so he couldn’t run for office, and meanwhile we kept looking at these CDs that they had on the desk with AMLO’s picture on it.
“Are those DVD’s?”
“No, those are CD’s.”
“Of music?”
“Yeah, songs that are in support of AMLO.”
“Really? Do they cost anything?”
“Ummm, yeah, treinta pesos (three dollars).”
Thinking this would be a great opportunity to learn more about local politics, and probably worth a laugh, Danielle and I decided to split the cost. All I had was a fifty, and so I asked him if he had change.
“Uhhhh, I only have fifteen pesos in change.”
“Well, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
And with that, Misael took the fifty, folded it up, looked quickly at the door separating the reception area and the office where everyone else was, and put the fifty in his pocket. He then looked at us, smiling, and made the universal “shhhhh” sign.
Aaaaahhhhh, México. It’s great to see that your politics are finally on the mend.
My friend Danielle and I are doing a project about local politics in San Cristobal, exploring the reasons why a town so central in the Zapatista uprising is still so conservative, and hardline PRIista. But enough about that. One of the interviews that we wanted to do was with a representative of the PRD, the leftist party that I have referenced before.
When we went to try and see a spokesman at noon, they told us no one comes in before five or six. Alright. So we went back at 7:30, and sure enough, the office was full of people. The people at the front were very nice, and promised us an interview very soon. So we sat down, and starting shooting the breeze with Misael, a young volunteer who was manning the front desk. Seeing as he had nothing to do, and we were just waiting, we started a long conversation (at least half an hour) about how he was an architecture student, and wanted to visit the US once he learned English, and was Presbyterian, etc.
So we asked him what he liked about Lopez Obrador, or AMLO as he is known.
“Yeah, I like him. He’s changing politics, you know? He’s trying to end corruption, and all of the scandals, and that’s good. I’m actually a PRIista, but don’t tell anyone. But he used to be from the PRI, and now he’s with the PRD because of all the corruption, and so I volunteer when I can.”
So we talked a bit more about AMLO, and the plot by the ruling parties to have him thrown in jail so he couldn’t run for office, and meanwhile we kept looking at these CDs that they had on the desk with AMLO’s picture on it.
“Are those DVD’s?”
“No, those are CD’s.”
“Of music?”
“Yeah, songs that are in support of AMLO.”
“Really? Do they cost anything?”
“Ummm, yeah, treinta pesos (three dollars).”
Thinking this would be a great opportunity to learn more about local politics, and probably worth a laugh, Danielle and I decided to split the cost. All I had was a fifty, and so I asked him if he had change.
“Uhhhh, I only have fifteen pesos in change.”
“Well, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
And with that, Misael took the fifty, folded it up, looked quickly at the door separating the reception area and the office where everyone else was, and put the fifty in his pocket. He then looked at us, smiling, and made the universal “shhhhh” sign.
Aaaaahhhhh, México. It’s great to see that your politics are finally on the mend.
Chiapas 2.
Time seems to have started flying by. After the first week, which seemed to take a month, there has been a steady telescoping of the days. Part of this is that all of us have had quite a fair amount of “down time” due to bouts of turista, which has hit most of the group of seventeen twice by now. The other part is the workload.
There are ten hours of Spanish class and five hours of academic class a week, plus at least one workshop, which involves having a discussion with some sort of local activist, such as the doctor who started the school (the one who listens to classical music) or a member of a group that enables indigenous communities to film and edit documentaries about their own lives. These are usually some of the most enriching experiences, as we are talking to people who in general are doing what we want to with our lives.
Other than that, it is reading all the time. Most of the study so far revolves around the competing theories of social arrangement, varying from neoliberal capitalism, to anarchism, Marxism, indigenism, nationalism, and so on. Of course, with the setting that we are in, many of these themes are related back to the Zapatistas. We seem to be surrounded by an atmosphere of Zapatismo. San Cris itself is full of reminders, but the school here is moreso. On the walls are posters from the Sixth Declaration (the sixth major communiqué by the zaps) and other Zapatista themes, and many of the students, too, wear t-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to La Otra Campana.
The other campaign, as it is in English, is a national tour undertaken by Subcomandante Marcos to discuss all of the issues not brought to the table by the presidential campaign currently underway in México. The three political parties in México, even that of “leftist” Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador, are quite similar to the two parties in the US, in that they promise different things to different voting blocs, but none offer real change to a deeply troubled country. Hence La Otra, as it is known here. Although Marcos has recently clarified that he is not trying to dissuade anyone from voting, he does lambaste all of the political parties on a regular basis. Troubling many of the nation’s leftists is the fact that he seems to reserve some of his harshest criticisms for Lopez Obrador, the populist former mayor of México City. To many Mexicans, he represents a real change to a political system not used to much change, including starting what amounts to a Social Security program. To the Zapatistas, he represents a party, the left-leaning PRD, which has repeatedly acted in cooperation with the efforts of the establishment parties to stifle all of the efforts of the Zapatistas. But it is not strictly personal. He is also financed by Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the country, and has basically admitted that he will abide by the guidelines of the neoliberal program.
Anyway, we watch all of these events from our little leftist sanctuary tucked away in the woods outside of town, the same town where Marcos launched La Otra back in January. While we are all trying to be serious students of political economy and capitalist hegemony (sorry, I just had to throw out some of those class terms), we all find ourselves being taken away at times by the romantic myth that Marcos has swaddled himself in. We found out, for instance, that the two dormitory rooms that all seventeen of us stay in sandwich a third room that is always empty and locked, and that that third room happens to be the room where Marcos stayed when he was in town. This, of course, set us all abuzz, trying to peek in the windows, and asking Freddy, a nineteen year-old basically in charge of keeping an eye on things, what it was like when La Otra was here.
Of course, being the group of politicalcorrectophiles that we are, with our classic leftist cynicism, none of this is done without full recognition of the irony involved. A bunch of American kids coming down to Chiapas, studying an indigenous movement, and swooning over the image (since it is an image more than a face) of their shadowy masked leader, who happens to not even be indigenous. Are we interested in the struggle, or just attracted by its romantic aspects? Are we all ready to apply our new knowledge of the way of the world to serious activism, as we all dutifully swore in our application papers, or is it just a nice semester abroad that provides more interesting stories than most? Is it a jump-off point, or nothing more than a coming of age ritual for people who fancy themselves some sort of revolutionaries, a couple of months in a developing country.
These are the bitter, cynical ways of looking at it, and almost all of us are unable to keep these thoughts out of our heads. But we try to combat it with one pieces that we picked up from one of our first readings, a piece by John Holloway. In it, he talks about how the Zapatistas have chosen to ignore the bitterness of history, and opted instead to confront the fear of ridicule, and so we see their communiqués so full of humility and optimism, and, for a lack of a better term, cheesiness. For really that’s what the bitterness of history has left us with, is an overwhelming sense of how cheesy anything done in earnest seems these days. And so it is with the group, all of us trying to overcome our own fear of ridicule, and believe that there might be something to the saying “We are all Zapatistas.”
If anything, two more weeks in San Cristobal and a month in a Zapatista community should be able to answer these questions.
There are ten hours of Spanish class and five hours of academic class a week, plus at least one workshop, which involves having a discussion with some sort of local activist, such as the doctor who started the school (the one who listens to classical music) or a member of a group that enables indigenous communities to film and edit documentaries about their own lives. These are usually some of the most enriching experiences, as we are talking to people who in general are doing what we want to with our lives.
Other than that, it is reading all the time. Most of the study so far revolves around the competing theories of social arrangement, varying from neoliberal capitalism, to anarchism, Marxism, indigenism, nationalism, and so on. Of course, with the setting that we are in, many of these themes are related back to the Zapatistas. We seem to be surrounded by an atmosphere of Zapatismo. San Cris itself is full of reminders, but the school here is moreso. On the walls are posters from the Sixth Declaration (the sixth major communiqué by the zaps) and other Zapatista themes, and many of the students, too, wear t-shirts proclaiming their allegiance to La Otra Campana.
The other campaign, as it is in English, is a national tour undertaken by Subcomandante Marcos to discuss all of the issues not brought to the table by the presidential campaign currently underway in México. The three political parties in México, even that of “leftist” Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador, are quite similar to the two parties in the US, in that they promise different things to different voting blocs, but none offer real change to a deeply troubled country. Hence La Otra, as it is known here. Although Marcos has recently clarified that he is not trying to dissuade anyone from voting, he does lambaste all of the political parties on a regular basis. Troubling many of the nation’s leftists is the fact that he seems to reserve some of his harshest criticisms for Lopez Obrador, the populist former mayor of México City. To many Mexicans, he represents a real change to a political system not used to much change, including starting what amounts to a Social Security program. To the Zapatistas, he represents a party, the left-leaning PRD, which has repeatedly acted in cooperation with the efforts of the establishment parties to stifle all of the efforts of the Zapatistas. But it is not strictly personal. He is also financed by Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the country, and has basically admitted that he will abide by the guidelines of the neoliberal program.
Anyway, we watch all of these events from our little leftist sanctuary tucked away in the woods outside of town, the same town where Marcos launched La Otra back in January. While we are all trying to be serious students of political economy and capitalist hegemony (sorry, I just had to throw out some of those class terms), we all find ourselves being taken away at times by the romantic myth that Marcos has swaddled himself in. We found out, for instance, that the two dormitory rooms that all seventeen of us stay in sandwich a third room that is always empty and locked, and that that third room happens to be the room where Marcos stayed when he was in town. This, of course, set us all abuzz, trying to peek in the windows, and asking Freddy, a nineteen year-old basically in charge of keeping an eye on things, what it was like when La Otra was here.
Of course, being the group of politicalcorrectophiles that we are, with our classic leftist cynicism, none of this is done without full recognition of the irony involved. A bunch of American kids coming down to Chiapas, studying an indigenous movement, and swooning over the image (since it is an image more than a face) of their shadowy masked leader, who happens to not even be indigenous. Are we interested in the struggle, or just attracted by its romantic aspects? Are we all ready to apply our new knowledge of the way of the world to serious activism, as we all dutifully swore in our application papers, or is it just a nice semester abroad that provides more interesting stories than most? Is it a jump-off point, or nothing more than a coming of age ritual for people who fancy themselves some sort of revolutionaries, a couple of months in a developing country.
These are the bitter, cynical ways of looking at it, and almost all of us are unable to keep these thoughts out of our heads. But we try to combat it with one pieces that we picked up from one of our first readings, a piece by John Holloway. In it, he talks about how the Zapatistas have chosen to ignore the bitterness of history, and opted instead to confront the fear of ridicule, and so we see their communiqués so full of humility and optimism, and, for a lack of a better term, cheesiness. For really that’s what the bitterness of history has left us with, is an overwhelming sense of how cheesy anything done in earnest seems these days. And so it is with the group, all of us trying to overcome our own fear of ridicule, and believe that there might be something to the saying “We are all Zapatistas.”
If anything, two more weeks in San Cristobal and a month in a Zapatista community should be able to answer these questions.
Chiapas
After a week in the program, school seems to be going well. The students and teachers have gotten to know each other, and we have all gotten sick together, and from this point we now seem ready to fully engage ourselves in the task at hand. The program itself is an ambitious one, and probably unmatched in terms of accredited collegiate study abroad programs.
The idea is to take a group of American students, who preferably have an interest in grassroots organizing, and introduce them to the world of organizing in México, so that they may be better served in their work when they get home. On top of this, the students receive a solid base in theory (of the economic and political sense) while having the opportunity to learn these things from lifetime activists in the field.
Tom, the director and lead professor, has pretty amazing credentials to teach the class. Currently working on his PhD at one of México’s most well-known public universities, Tom has been active in México, and particularly Chiapas since the eighties. It is not uncommon to have a conversation with Tom and have him casually mention that he has had several personal one-on-one conversations with Fidel in his Presidential office.
It did surprise us, however, to learn that our easy-going smile-prone Spanish teacher (who happens to be Tom’s wife) was one of the founding members of the EZLN (the military wing and predecessor to the Zapatistas) and still has many of the Zapatista bank accounts in her name.
The way that we found this out, of course, is that she just had her banks accounts closed by the second bank in a short time. Both banks have closed these accounts, knowing of the political aspect of them, without any explanation. In response, she and a group of Zapatista sympathizers have been forced to go to México City to have press conferences to draw attention to the actions of these banks. After all, there are only six national banks in México, and at this rate there won’t be anywhere for the Zaps to put their money very soon.
The students have become accustomed to this constant realization that the people we are meeting and working with are very serious accomplished people, living in a country where the rule of law is really more of a suggestion than a rule. We watched a movie where we found out our teacher had been convicted of being a Zapatista in 1995 (when the relationship between the government and the EZLN was very tense), before having the conviction thrown out because the confession had been forced out by torture. Or, on a lighter note, having of the students ask, in the middle of class, if we could ask the guy in the next room turn down his music, only to have our teacher explain that the reason he listens to it so loud is so that the government can’t hear his conversations when he has company.
The person in question, Raymundo, is the founder of the Universidad de la Tierra, where we are living and having class for the first month of the program. Located on the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas, the school serves indigenous youth (13-22, roughly), giving them political and historical education (of the rather leftist sort) but focusing more on vocational training of the student’s choice. Since the school is viewed as more of a social work than a normal school, there is an ethic of preservation and sacrifice abundant on campus. Almost everything on campus is built by the students, using techniques that minimize cost and waste. Much of the food is provided by students studying farming and animal husbandry, and even the waste produced by the animals is carefully converted into fertilizer for the agriculture program.
Of course, to make the school affordable, and because funding for such a school is not easy, the accommodations are a little rustic. Most students are slowly getting used to no hot water or heating, slightly “firmer” beds, and so on, leading to widespread feelings of pamperedness/homesickness.
Warming the atmosphere are the quaint little effects, such as the bleating of the sheep and goats who graze freely on campus, or the picture of the virgin of Guadalupe in the dining hall that has her face covered by a red bandana.
UniTierra is one of several places that you find open support for the Zaps around San Cristobal. Throughout town you can see pictures, T-shirts, graffiti, and so on, although the vast majority of it seems to exist solely because the tourists are so eager to buy it up. Even this, though, belies a tension in the town. In general, San Cris is a conservative town, and it is safe to say there is a large portion who do not support them or any of their counterparts. In fact, one of the most famouns churches in San Cris was nearly burned down by a large mob upset by the church’s support of the EZLN. These people, ostensibly, were angry that the Zapatistas had brought warfare into their town. Of course, from the EZLN’s point of view, they were only bringing to town the war they had been fighting for 500 years. But who knows.
Hopefully I will be able to illustrate these issues a little better in the coming weeks, as we learn more and more about the Zapatistas, and prepare for our month of living with them in one of their autonomous communities. I’ll keep you posted.
The idea is to take a group of American students, who preferably have an interest in grassroots organizing, and introduce them to the world of organizing in México, so that they may be better served in their work when they get home. On top of this, the students receive a solid base in theory (of the economic and political sense) while having the opportunity to learn these things from lifetime activists in the field.
Tom, the director and lead professor, has pretty amazing credentials to teach the class. Currently working on his PhD at one of México’s most well-known public universities, Tom has been active in México, and particularly Chiapas since the eighties. It is not uncommon to have a conversation with Tom and have him casually mention that he has had several personal one-on-one conversations with Fidel in his Presidential office.
It did surprise us, however, to learn that our easy-going smile-prone Spanish teacher (who happens to be Tom’s wife) was one of the founding members of the EZLN (the military wing and predecessor to the Zapatistas) and still has many of the Zapatista bank accounts in her name.
The way that we found this out, of course, is that she just had her banks accounts closed by the second bank in a short time. Both banks have closed these accounts, knowing of the political aspect of them, without any explanation. In response, she and a group of Zapatista sympathizers have been forced to go to México City to have press conferences to draw attention to the actions of these banks. After all, there are only six national banks in México, and at this rate there won’t be anywhere for the Zaps to put their money very soon.
The students have become accustomed to this constant realization that the people we are meeting and working with are very serious accomplished people, living in a country where the rule of law is really more of a suggestion than a rule. We watched a movie where we found out our teacher had been convicted of being a Zapatista in 1995 (when the relationship between the government and the EZLN was very tense), before having the conviction thrown out because the confession had been forced out by torture. Or, on a lighter note, having of the students ask, in the middle of class, if we could ask the guy in the next room turn down his music, only to have our teacher explain that the reason he listens to it so loud is so that the government can’t hear his conversations when he has company.
The person in question, Raymundo, is the founder of the Universidad de la Tierra, where we are living and having class for the first month of the program. Located on the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas, the school serves indigenous youth (13-22, roughly), giving them political and historical education (of the rather leftist sort) but focusing more on vocational training of the student’s choice. Since the school is viewed as more of a social work than a normal school, there is an ethic of preservation and sacrifice abundant on campus. Almost everything on campus is built by the students, using techniques that minimize cost and waste. Much of the food is provided by students studying farming and animal husbandry, and even the waste produced by the animals is carefully converted into fertilizer for the agriculture program.
Of course, to make the school affordable, and because funding for such a school is not easy, the accommodations are a little rustic. Most students are slowly getting used to no hot water or heating, slightly “firmer” beds, and so on, leading to widespread feelings of pamperedness/homesickness.
Warming the atmosphere are the quaint little effects, such as the bleating of the sheep and goats who graze freely on campus, or the picture of the virgin of Guadalupe in the dining hall that has her face covered by a red bandana.
UniTierra is one of several places that you find open support for the Zaps around San Cristobal. Throughout town you can see pictures, T-shirts, graffiti, and so on, although the vast majority of it seems to exist solely because the tourists are so eager to buy it up. Even this, though, belies a tension in the town. In general, San Cris is a conservative town, and it is safe to say there is a large portion who do not support them or any of their counterparts. In fact, one of the most famouns churches in San Cris was nearly burned down by a large mob upset by the church’s support of the EZLN. These people, ostensibly, were angry that the Zapatistas had brought warfare into their town. Of course, from the EZLN’s point of view, they were only bringing to town the war they had been fighting for 500 years. But who knows.
Hopefully I will be able to illustrate these issues a little better in the coming weeks, as we learn more and more about the Zapatistas, and prepare for our month of living with them in one of their autonomous communities. I’ll keep you posted.
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