Discourse in Cancun

January 20, 2006

Here I want to translate a particularly potent piece, part of the Delegado’s discourse in Cancun.
“Believe me, what we are seeing from here—that is, from this side of the ski masks—is a movement richer in ideas, proposals, and struggles than this country has known in all of its history. What is being built right now is the most beautiful lesson of love that this country could receive, and we have to choose if we are going to give this lesson or receive it. Each person has their own heart, their own thought to consult, we’re not going to obligate or impose anything on anyone. Weigh your reasons, think through them, and decide for yourself, because it is this is what we’re fighting for: liberty. We’re not going to supplant one tyrrany for another, what we want is to construct from below something else that is going to be so new that not even we—and they’ve always told us that we are too imaginative and dreamy—can imagine. That’s why we still can’t define it, that’s why we say: we can’t go further as just us, the next step we have to take with more people, with you.” January 17, Cancun.

3 Trajectories of the Sixth

January 18
Three important trajectories emerge in the writings, meetings, and words of the Sexta, both in the preliminary meetings in the fall in the Selva and in these first weeks of January circulating through Chiapas (this appears again below because I placed it wrong and I'm having editing difficulties in changing it)
The first is that the Sexta, the movement that has been launched with the 6th Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle, is anti-capitalist. This is significant because the discourse around zapatismo has often been specifically anti-neoliberal, certainly critical of current global economic policy, but only sporadically vocally anti-capitalist, though the practice has always been that. Now, however, all the language of the Sexta is explicitly, repeatedly, and with much emphasis anti-capitalist. In each city and village the caravan travels, in fact, Delegado O takes the local economy as an example—whether that is fisheries, farms, factories, the tourism industry—and describes the current conditions of inequality and exploitation in terms of primitive accumulation—the theft, plundering, expropriation, and legalized robbery that enables the capitalist class structure. That accumulation process continues, the people in nearly every part of Chiapas have pointed out: we work hard all day everyday and in the end all we have is the same shit or worse. It’s the same everywhere, Delegado O repeats, it’s the same in the jungle, in Palenque, in Tonala, in Huixtla, here in this tiny coastal fishing village of Joaquin Amado, it’s the same in Sinaloa, Tijuana, Mexico City, and it’s the same in “el otro lado,” or the “other side” of the border, the United States. In Huixtla, the damage from Hurricane Stan was fierce and the aid and repairs never arrived, despite all the TV spots, sponsored by political parties, showing a ceremonial photo-opp delivery of goods to affected communities. A student from the UNAM gets up to speak in Huixtla and describes the clean-up activities the students did for the damnificados, or victims of the hurricane. But we have not done enough, she continues, because we are all damnificados, not of Stan but of capitalism and the unemployment, poverty, and misery it brings to all of us. We are fighting for a free and public university system, she says, but what good does a free education do if young people don’t have the resources to feed themselves day to day?

The interesting thing here is that, through the discourse of the Sexta, there is growing, widespread critique of the economy throughout Mexico not just in terms of inflation, corruption, and foreign expropriation, but specifically of capitalism as a system. Capitalism becomes a recognizable phenomenon, instead of a system hiding behind it’s symptoms of “consumer confidence,” “market fluctuations,” or inevitable economic cycles. Imagine a common critique, or at least recognition, of capitalism in the U.S.!

Second, and closely related, is the clear rejection of electoral politics and state solutions, rather than just a critique of corrupt politicians or the party in power. Change will not come from above, Delegado O repeats in nearly every meeting, and inevitably the people murmur and nod when he clarifies: what is screwing us over here is a system, sometimes its is tri-colored, sometimes blue, sometimes black and yellow (referring to the respective colors of the PRI, PAN, and PRD, the three primary political parties in Mexico), but who cares what color they put on if we continue seeing the same gray? If everyday is a gamble whether we will wake up the next? Or if we will be in jail by tonight? Choosing a candidate and a party is just choosing which one will beat us up, refuse to pay us for our work, put us in jail, kill or disappear us. But it is not just that these parties are corrupt, he pushes further, it is a system, not just political and economic but also representational, that we do not want. How long are we going to sit here waiting for someone to do for us what we have to do ourselves? How long will we waste our time voting to delegate someone above to do what can only be done from below?

Which brings us to the third trajectory: subjectivity. There is no room in the Sexta for anyone to stand on the outside and offer support, service, solidarity with the movement. We ARE the movement. This is a big adjustment for “civil society”: for twelve years they had to learn to listen to the Zapatistas, even (and especially) when they were silent. But now they/we are being asked to speak, and to speak of their own struggles. The only way to join the Sexta is to join as a compañeo in struggle. The question the EZ poses in the Sexta is no longer do you understand our struggle and do you support it, but, what is your struggle?

January 16
In Quintana Roo, Subdelegado O talks about the decision Comandanta Ramona had to make. She had to decide whether to get married and have a home and a family, or to do political work, because, as a woman, this was a choice she had to make. Ramona and Susana, another insurgenta began the organizational work with women, going community to community, kitchen to kitchen, talking to the women of the communities, and all this before there were roads or transport. And after 10 years of this organizing work, they wrote the Zapatista Revolutionary Law for Women which the delegado describes, “where they claimed important rights that may sound funny to you, but they were radical claims, like women could be drivers! They could move about without depending on a man, probably drunk anyway, to drive them.” Susana is coming back, he informs the people in Quintana Roo, this fall when the Zapatistas comandantes leave the jungle to spread throughout the country and stay with the people for a longer time to learn about their lives and struggles, Susana is coming here. So take your time, think about it carefully, he urges as he has in each city and town so far, and then decide if you want to join us. We won’t come solve your problems, we will only bring more, news of the problems everywhere else. But we will come and we will stay and we will all work together.

This is one of the fascinating turns of the Sexta: for 12 years national and international “civil society” have accompanied the Zapatista communities in their struggles, in their defense and their initiatives and their construction of autonomy. Now, as part of the Sexta, and as of September 2006, the Zapatistas are coming out of the mountains and the jungle to accompany communities in the rest of the country in their struggles: “So this is what we are going to do, and we’re not asking you to do a task for us, but rather to receive us, when we return, so that, alongside you, we will go to Chichen Itzá to be with the artisan companeros there while they are making and selling their merchandise, we will go with the companeros of Oxcun, we will be with the women in Yucatan that are meeting to discuss their problems, with the children when they go to school, with the housewives where they are discussing problems of the household or the neighborhood, and this is how we will learn from you, because we are going to struggle all of us together and begin to unite our struggle to others.” Quintana Roo, January 16.

links

January 14
Today the adherents of the Sexta in Chiapas meet representatives adherents from Yucatan and the caravan leaves Chiapas to continue the tour in the rest of the nation. Again, there is good covereage of the events in the Yucatan Peninsula at www.narconews.com and at www.chiapas.indymedia.org. The EZLN webpage puts up all of the Delegado 0's discourses at www.ezln.org.mx

Huixta and Nueva Villaflores

January 13
Huixtla
In Huixtla and Nueva Villaflores the discussion on self-organization moves into self-governance (this is continued from the post below, you have to read backwards, that is, chronologically):
You saw what happened after the hurricane, there was no aid, they said it was coming but they didn’t deliver, they just took pictures. We have to find another path, we have to talk to each other and build a different way. We have to learn to govern, that’s what we mean when we say our right to self-govern, that’s what we do in the autonomous municipalities. We rotate governance, nobody gets paid, and after they finish their turn, they don’t get rich and leave, they go back to the fields with everyone else. People who can’t read or write can govern! All you need to govern is a good heart and the willingness to listen to the people—that is indigenous autonomy for us...(paraphrased from the Delegado's words in Huixtla/Nueva Villaflores)

When Indignation is Organized

January 11
Tonala, Joaquin Amaro, San Isidro.
The effects of long-term politician-paternalism are strong, even where the people have been able to carry forward autonomous struggles. In Tonala, when they see the caravan and all the motion around Delegado 0, some people ask, when will the sandwiches be distributed? What time are they going to start handing out the hats and t-shirts? This is common campaign practice, the candidates pull into town to give their speech, hand out a snack, a t-shirt, maybe a little bit of money, and then continue on to the next town. Sometimes the local people who speak at the events ask Delegado O to represent them, to take their cause to the capital, to defend their rights, to correct the injustices they live with. One woman in Tonala accidentally says “Presidente O” instead of Delegado O. Marcos laughs, but he speaks clearly and bluntly when it is his turn: We can’t fix the electricity or the shrimp price, we can’t fix the bridge here or the taxes on the tricycleros (the public transport via tricyle). But we will take what you have told us here and inform everyone. He continues—the thing is, the politicians won’t fix it either, they don’t care, they won’t follow through, and they can’t resolve what we are talking about here anyway. The people murmur in agreement. Politicians don’t produce anything, the Delegado had pointed out a few days ago in Tuxtla, their job is to direct traffic and they don’t even do that very well. And most importantly, we can do better than this? Why do we go buy these pathetic products at superstores? Why don’t we buy better things from each other directly?

I want to recount some statements here, collected from the past few days in Chiapa de Corzo, Tuxtla, Tonala, Joaquin Amaro, San Isidro where the EZ’s discourse moves from the problems presented to self-organization to the creation of a new common:
The problem with our rebellion is that it is dispersed, loose, he insists. Zapatismo isn’t enough, we need all of us. The only way to survive today is to resist collectively, as individuals they will destroy us. And although the EZLN is a big collective, they can destroy us too if we don’t unite with others....
We have to construct from the beginning (of this campaign) a form of participation and information that keeps us united, as if we were permanently in assembly, like what we’re doing here but at a national level....
This movement doesn’t depend on Delegado O or Subcomandante Marcos or this caravan; it depends on the feeling of rage and indignation that drives all of us to this next step, and what makes those “above” tremble is that this rage and indignation will organized itself....
This feeling of indignation and rebellion needs a destiny, we think, and that destiny is organization in struggle. But the struggle is not just blocking a street or holding a protest or having a meeting, it also has to do with culture, with music, with song, with theater, with movies, texts, poetry, literature, with the media, like those that accompany us now to take your voice to all the others that are in the Otra and make it loud.

We began with Six

January 9, 2005
Before the tour was suspended a few days ago in Tonala, Delegado O had started to talk about the early days of the EZLN. He states that at the beginning, there were 6 of them, 5 men, one woman, 3 indigenous, 3 from the city. And they began going house to house, community by community. That is how Zapatismo started! Well that’s not true—it started in the accumulated histories and experiences and struggles of the indigenous people in Chiapas and all the other communities, full of desire and living with repression, that received, echoed, and transformed what those 6 people in the jungle initiated. But the organizational effort, the beginning, required a decision. This has been a recurring theme in each place we stop: we have to decide. Decide whether you want to participate in a country that excludes or uses you, or decide to construct a different country. It is only up to us, it is repeated in each place, if we don’t do something, there won’t be anything, there is nothing to wait for, no one will or can solve this for us. The Sup tells the modest beginnings of the EZLN for this purpose—to express that when they decided to do something, they were small, poor, unknown, with nothing but their words and the power of encounter.
On September 16, at the plenary session of the Sexta in the caracol of La Garrucha, the Sup read a poem by Jacobo Silva Nogales, which is called “Secondary Effects,” written two years ago in the Almoloya jail: (translation Irlandesa)

If I could, perhaps
up there by the entrance
of the entrance I would put a sign
and it would say: “Warning,
drive with care.”
At very high doses,
it can produce sadness,
anxiety, neurosis, insomnia,
depression, suicide attempts,
family disintegration, loneliness, bitterness,
addictions to medicines or drugs,
to insipid TV programs,
to any sport, entertainment,
to sleep,
eyes closed or open,
claustrophobia, perhaps narcissism,
onanism or change of sexual option.
A brief contact could produce
repressed anger, a knot in the throat, burning in the eyes.
Prolonged exposure,
even indirect,
could produce hearts that are hard,
even more so than rocks.
And in extreme cases,
hidden sadism behind an austere face,
very serious.
Those are the rules.
In sensitive hearts,
it can cause a desire for some change,
and some little drops of effort.
And on the last line,
the label would read:
instead of the eternal “Consult your physician,”
just a simple:
“Consult yourself
and do something, god damn it!”

August 10, 2003, Almoloya of Juárez
Jacobo Silva Nogales

Returning to the subject of compañerismo in the January 4 entry above, it is important to distinguish between personal relationships, ie being friends, and being compa~eros. This is not the comraderie of the locker-room/corner-office ass-slapping, shoulder-rubbing, back-patting gentlemen’s agreements that characterize the personal alliances of politicians and old left hierarchies. There will be no positions, no pay, no prestige, it is emphasized over and over. The old rules of the game will have no play, the cunning comraderie of the elite will get you nowhere in the Sexta. There may be no individual award, apart from satisfaction of collective and cooperative creation. But this is what it is about: compa~erismo requires a collective subjectivity that, for those schooled in the oedipal education of the nuclear family and bourgeois social institutions, means overcoming the limited identities that have raised us as static subjects instead of dynamic singularities.

Don’t be afraid, the EZ also says repeatedly, or if you’re afraid don’t let it stop you. Our individual fears are isolated and disperse, they hold us back, they hold us down. But when our own fears meet the fears of others, the Sup says, they change into courage. This is what happened to us in the EZLN, he continues. As individuals or little groups we were scared and we didn’t want to enter in. But when we discovered this common pain that all of us had, our own pain multipled but so did our courage and we said, we have to change this. This is the decision that has to be made. Take it, he says at the end of each meeting, take the sexta, claim it, make it yours, and don’t let it go. Everyone can have a place and everyone will be listened to. He draws upon the legacy of his second in command, who fell January 1st, 1994, in Ocosingo, and whose death he didn’t talk about for nearly 10 years: "Comandante Pedro would be pleased to be able to say “compa~ero. This is always what we have wanted.”

Comandante Ramona

January 6, 2005
Tonala
Today Comandanta Ramona died. One of the best -known and most-respected commanders of the EZLN, Ramona fought for 20 years as part of the EZLN and the CCRI (Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee) and helped write the Zapatista Revolutionary Law for Women. Much has been made of Ramona’s tiny stature and enormous courage, her near illiteracy and powerful words. She was the first Zapatista to break the military enclosure of the insurgents in Chiapas when she went to Mexico City in 1996 to receive a kidney transplant for the same illness that eventually took her life. In that trip she spoke to millions in the zocolo, previewing what would come ten years later with the Sexta: “We hope that all of you walk with us. We want to unite our small Zapatista voice with the big voice of all of you that fight for a new Mexico. We came here to shout, with all of you, the ‘ya basta,’ enough, never again a Mexico without us. This is what we want, a Mexico where we all have a place, a dignified place.”
The Sup receives the news in the middle of a town meeting in Tonala. After an hour’s mysterious wait, he returns to announce her death, stating, “In this situation it is very difficult to speak. What I can say is that the world has lost one of those women who births new worlds. Mexico has lost one of the kind of fighters it needs, and we have lost a piece of our hearts.” The tour is suspended for 2 days as the EZ and the communities mourn Ramona’s death.

Other Loves

January 5, 2006
A clip from Delegado O’s participation last night in the Plaza Catedral of San Cristobal de las Casas, starting off the Sexta/Otra with a recognition of love and difference:
“In the struggle, the question of love has come up. And what we see is that there are many ways to love, and it’s not true that love only happens between a man and a woman. What we have learned, as Zapatistas, that in the world there are many ways to love. Sometimes men love each other, sometimes women love each other, there are many ways and paths of love. And we know for those that love in ways other then just between a man and a woman, society, authorities, even we ourselves, see them as bad, as delinquent, as people who could do us damage. But no! That’s not our experience, what we’ve seen at least is they are like all other people, and in fact the majority of the time they are more authentic than heterosexuals in their lives and struggles. And we think, we have studied, that, like indigenous, young people, women, they are also exploited, repressed, victimized by capitalism. So we have to see that they too have a space too within the Sexta/Otra, in the struggle, we have to make this space.”
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
January 1, 2006
San Cristobal de las Casas

The Sixth: Anti-capitalist, non-electoral, and the subjectivity of struggle

January 4, 2006
Three important trajectories emerge in the writings, meetings, and words of the Sexta, both in the preliminary meetings in the fall in the Selva and in these first days of January circulating through Chiapas (some of this I’ve added in later, in days and visits after the 4th)
The first is that the Sexta, the movement that has been launched with the 6th Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle, is anti-capitalist. This is significant because the discourse around zapatismo has often been specifically anti-neoliberal, certainly critical of current global economic policy, but only sporadically vocally anti-capitalist, though the practice has always been that. Now, however, all the language of the Sexta is explicitly, repeatedly, and with much emphasis anti-capitalist. In each city and village the caravan travels, in fact, Delegado O takes the local economy as an example—whether that is fisheries, farms, factories, the tourism industry—and describes the current conditions of inequality and exploitation in terms of primitive accumulation—the theft, plundering, expropriation, and legalized robbery that enables the capitalist class structure. That accumulation process continues, the people in nearly every part of Chiapas have pointed out: we work hard all day everyday and in the end all we have is the same shit or worse. It’s the same everywhere, Delegado O repeats, it’s the same in the jungle, in Palenque, in Tonala, in Huixtla, here in this tiny coastal fishing village of Joaquin Amado, it’s the same in Sinaloa, Tijuana, Mexico City, and it’s the same in “el otro lado,” or the “other side” of the border, the United States. In Huixtla, the damage from Hurricane Stan was fierce and the aid and repairs never arrived, despite all the TV spots, sponsored by political parties, showing a ceremonial photo-opp delivery of goods to affected communities. A student from the UNAM gets up to speak in Huixtla and describes the clean-up activities the students did for the damnificados, or victims of the hurricane. But we have not done enough, she continues, because we are all damnificados, not of Stan but of capitalism and the unemployment, poverty, and misery it brings to all of us. We are fighting for a free and public university system, she says, but what good does a free education do if young people don’t have the resources to feed themselves day to day?

The interesting thing here is that, through the discourse of the Sexta, there is growing, widespread critique of the economy throughout Mexico not just in terms of inflation, corruption, and foreign expropriation, but specifically of capitalism as a system. Capitalism becomes a recognizable phenomenon, instead of a system hiding behind it’s symptoms of “consumer confidence,” “market fluctuations,” or inevitable economic cycles. Imagine a common critique, or at least recognition, of capitalism in the U.S.!

Second, and closely related, is the clear rejection of electoral politics and state solutions, rather than just a critique of corrupt politicians or the party in power. Change will not come from above, Delegado O repeats in nearly every meeting, and inevitably the people murmur and nod when he clarifies: what is screwing us over here is a system, sometimes its is tri-colored, sometimes blue, sometimes black and yellow (referring to the respective colors of the PRI, PAN, and PRD, the three primary political parties in Mexico), but who cares what color they put on if we continue seeing the same gray? If everyday is a gamble whether we will wake up the next? Or if we will be in jail by tonight? Choosing a candidate and a party is just choosing which one will beat us up, refuse to pay us for our work, put us in jail, kill or disappear us. But it is not just that these parties are corrupt, he pushes further, it is a system, not just political and economic but also representational, that we do not want. How long are we going to sit here waiting for someone to do for us what we have to do ourselves? How long will we waste our time voting to delegate someone above to do what can only be done from below?

Which brings us to the third trajectory: subjectivity. There is no room in the Sexta for anyone to stand on the outside and offer support, service, solidarity with the movement. We ARE the movement. This is a big adjustment for “civil society”: for twelve years they had to learn to listen to the Zapatistas, even (and especially) when they were silent. But now they/we are being asked to speak, and to speak of their own struggles. The only way to join the Sexta is to join as a compañero in struggle. The question the EZ poses in the Sexta is no longer do you understand our struggle and do you support it, but, what is your struggle?

Palenque

January 3, 2006
The army base outside Palenque, where the caravan is scheduled to arrive today, is covered with Zapatistas. The Zapatista communities from the Northern Zone have come by the thousands to the city to usher in the Sup and the Sexta. They form human chains on either side of the caravan and they walk us from the base to the town square, though it feels as though they are carrying us. There are kids, old women, babies, everyone wears a pasamonta~as in the boiling heat, some of the women walk barefoot on the hot asphalt, young girls march for hours in jellies, or plastic sandals. For the 2 hours it takes us to move a little over a mile, they never stop chanting, “Viva el Subcomnandante Marcos!” “Viva el Delegado O!” “Viva los municipios autonomos!” Viva la sociedad civil nacional y internacional! And one I’ve never heard here, “Viva la izquierda!” (Long live the Left!)
The people of Palenque peer out of their houses as the masses of masked indigenous people, who live far from the concrete houses and commercial districts and paved streets of Palenque, take the city by the thousands, the first time they have entered Palenque en masse, ushering in their commander and now delegate, making the city theirs and the sixth’s. The people watch, it seems to me, with a mix of admiration and fear. It is striking, the incredible force and respect these people command, that they have constructed, that they have created from, materially, nearly nothing. The ski mask with the indigenous dress has come to signify an incredibly powerful militancy, a force that commands respect, a dignity that keeps the world’s eyes on them and the military’s hands off them.
The Zapatista chains close behind the last vehicle of the convoy, encircling us and, it seems like, carrying us forward like a precious delivery into the middle of Palenque. After the long, hot, events of the day, they keep guard all night, in a circle, arms linked, around the entrance to the building where the Sup sleeps. Each autonomous community is identified by a different color ribbon tied to their pasamonta~as, and every couple hours, a new ribbon color forms straight lines to march into the security circle, binding hands and expanding to burst and replace the old one. In the morning they form chains and walk us back out of the city again.

January 1, 2006

January 1, 2006
The Sup, Subdelegado O that is, left the jungle today on a motorcycle, unarmed and unprotected by anything other than the support of what the Zapatistas have always called “civil society.” In the caravan that followed him we could barely keep up with the pace he set, weaving through the rocks and potholes of the rough dirt road that requires two hours of jaw-rattling driving from La Garrucha to the highway in Ocosingo. On the back of the motorcycle rides “El Pinguino,” the new EZ mascot, a crippled chicken-turned-penguin that walks upright, in part per its disabled leg but more importantly, the EZ insists, per one’s right and desire to choose or self-determine what one wants to be.

That Marcos leaves the jungle as a “delegado” rather than a comandante is important: the EZLN has sent him not as a soldier or a military spokesperson, but as a kind of scout for the Sexta, sent to explore the territory for a new campaign that is political, public, pacifistic. The Sup still wears his pasamonta~as—this is still not about the man, any man, under the mask. Marcos is something we have all created, a result of global Zapatismo, a collectively generated figure produced from the interactions of the EZ with a global public. The humble chicken/penguin mascot, the insistence on “subdelegado” rather than “subcomandante”, the lack of military fanfare, ceremony, or security around Marcos, all contribute to the EZ’s message and purpose in sending the delegado first—neither he nor we are your leaders, commanders, or campaign incumbents, we are trying to be a bridge, not only between you and us but to help you, in the plural, to meet each other. Like the example we, as Kilombo, posed in our letter of response to the Sexta, this first part of the “Otra” is like the musicians of the Colombian vallenato, that travel village to village accumulating stories and converting them into a song to sing in the next village, sharing and circulating the news and experiences, and in the case of the Sexta, the struggles, and creating a web of shared knowledge without a centralization of information.

It should be understood that this departure, this shift in strategy of struggle is an enormous risk. It is a military risk to the Zapatista communities for the EZ commanders to leave the jungle, although insurgents remain, organized, trained and ready to defend the communities, in the mountains. It is a physical risk to Marcos, to emerge unarmed and unprotected into society, in plain site and range of a government and a state military upon which he, as a commander in an insurgent guerrilla army, declared war twelve years ago. But most of all it is a political risk. What they have built from behind the masks, in the clandestinity of the mountains and the jungle, what they have built in community assemblies, in the Juntas de Buen Gobierno, in their words and their silences, in communiqués to and encounters with the “civil society”, has put them in a position of international recognition and respect, given them a prominence within the global anti-capitalist movement, created a local, sustainable, resistance and a functioning autonomy, and provided a certain stability or security upheld by those constructions. National and International civil society had gotten comfortable with Zapatista modes and manners of existence, always ready to denounce aggressions against the communities, to support the construction of autonomy in Chiapas, to send aid—manual, monetary, material—when needed. But the Zapatistas refuse to be static, they refuse to be the object of anyone else’s politics, to sit on anyone’s pedestal, to fulfill expectations, to do what is expected of them. They refuse to let power pile up, they are constantly shifting the terms of the game, the terms of involvement, the circulation of power so that it may not accumulate. They keep changing the path, walking a new direction, trying a new talk, teaching us a new word, a new concept of the global, of the common, of the created.

Persecution is a risk, but perhaps the bigger risk is that “civil society” will not hold up its end of the bargain once the mountain mystique is gone, that it will not mobilize itself for itself, to be a mass movement instead of supporting one. The Zapatista refusal to be contained to Chiapas is a both an incredible vulnerability and an incredible strength. But they can’t do it alone.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the “leftist” PRD candidate and frontrunner for the 2006 presidential elections that the Zapatistas have harshly denounced, may have granted the indigenous communities “autonomous” rights, if elected. But those rights would stay in Chiapas, contained in "indigenous territory," managed and legislated out from the centers of power into these small, self-determined communities that, while inspirational, would maintain their distance from the world and retain their marginality, whether it be an oppressive, privileged, or merely isolated margin. They will not be that margin, that contained space, that particular. Autonomy is not just for the indigenous Marcos has said over and over. And now they will prove it. You can participate directly in this struggle, they say to civil society, or you can distance yourself from what we do next. You can remain in the aura of that political moment, or you can do politics, which always refers to the present. You can stick to supporting the indigenous fight, thanks for your help, or you can join us and fight for yourselves.

As the Subdelegado O states this first night of the Sexta, this new strategy of struggle, upon addressing the thousands gathered in the plaza in San Cristobal de las Casas, “You have always told us, 'No estan solos,' that we were not alone. Well now we say, neither are you.”

Hola Kilombo and fellow intergalacticos,
Here I am pasting the posts from the last 3 weeks, dates included, that I couldn’t post daily for lack of internet access during the first few weeks of the caravan of the Otra in Chiapas. The caravan is currently in Tabasco—you can hear audio of the events there (as well as Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo) at the EZLN site: www.ezln.org.mx. Within the week I will rejoin the caravan in Veracruz and keep you updated from the road. Other good sources of information are Narco News, which has been doing background work on local struggles at the sites visited by the caravan, you can see their reports at www.narconews.org, and Indymedia Chiapas www.chiapas.indymedia.org, which has posts or links to almost everything written from the road.