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.