My Word is My Weapon

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

2013-05-07T16:49:00.000-05:00

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

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

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

SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES FOR THE NINTH PROGRAM

“CHIAPAS AGAINST THE GRAIN”

JULY 29 TO AUGUST 2, 2013

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

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

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

Constructing a community police in the town of Álvaro Obregón, Oaxaca

2013-02-16T23:21:00.000-06:00

Strengthening the Struggle to Defend Territory on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Published on February 11, 2013 in Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Juchitán

by Daniel Arellano Chávez, Proyecto Ambulante
translation by El Enemigo Común

March in Álvaro Obregón. February 10, 2013

Today, February 10, 2013 is certainly a watershed in the struggle for the defense of the land and territory on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. After the successful resistance against the repression ordered by Oaxaca state governor Gabino Cué to shield Mareña Renovables, the peoples of the Isthmus are at a decisive moment in their struggle to defend their territory. The Assembly held today and the sizeable march in Álvaro Obregón has provided the ideal setting for announcing townspeople’s decisions, expelling false political leaders and their political parties, and beginning the construction of a Community Police.
At the old General Charis military quarters, the scene of the historic resistance of February 2, men and women from San Dionisio del Mar, San Mateo del Mar, Xadani, Emiliano Zapata, San Blas Atempa, Unión Hidalgo, and Juchitán, among other communities, came together in the morning to ratify their total rejection of the wind projects in the region and demand the immediate expulsion of Mareña Renovables from the territories of the Isthmus.

The Assembly and march come on the heels of the desperate, venomous statements made by Gabino Cué Monteagudo last February 6, when he said: “They’re just tiny groups of people who spend their time drinking, attacking the police, and holding up social projects that the company is committed to implementing for the benefit of the community.”

The decisive actions taken by community people are a clear demonstration of the resistance against the advance of transnationals in regional towns.

The Community Assembly of Álvaro Obregón states: “In the full exercise of our right to self-determination and autonomy as Binnizá indigenous people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and in view of the violations of our territorial rights by the state government and corporations, we have resolved that as of tomorrow we will begin to organize the first detachment of our Binni Guia’pa’ Guidxi’ (community police) in defense of the land and territory; it will be made up of people from our communities.” During the march, this decision was underscored with signs, banners and chants demanding the exit of all repressive forces, making it clear that no kind of state or federal police is welcome and that access to the Mexican Army and Navy will be blocked.

Upcoming resistance actions are proposed for February 13 in San Dionisio del Mar, and a call is being sent out for national and international solidarity and for the participation of indigenous peoples of the region and the country to cover the Humanitarian Caravan and Solidarity Cavalcade with Guidxi’ro Resistance that will be held on Sunday February 17, setting out from different points to then converge in Álvaro Obregón. Plans also call for shoring up the collection of provisions and supplies at Radio Totopo in Juchitán, and the Universidad de la Tierra in Colonia Reforma, City of Oaxaca.

Heading up today’s march was a large group of boys and girls, followed by dozens of women, then hundreds of men, women, young people, elders, Zapotecs and Ikjots, chanting with all their might: “Zapata lives! The struggle continues!”, “Mareña Renovables out now!”, and a message that could presage the future of the governor of Oaxaca, “Gabino Cué, out now!”

So this is the way resistance is being strengthened from within. Now it’s time for the peoples of Oaxaca, the country and the world to show their heartfelt support for the righteous people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

Source in Spanish: Proyecto Ambulante

Spanish language video:

MANIFIESTO DE LA ASAMBLEA COMUNITARIA DE GUI’XHI’ RO ÁLVARO OBREGÓN

Subcomandante Marcos Introduces the new Subcomandante Moises in Them and Us VI: The Gazes 5

2013-02-16T15:59:00.001-06:00

Them and Us

VI. The Gaze 5.

5.- To gaze into the night in which we are.

(From the new moon to the crescent moon)

Subcomandantes Insurgentes Marcos (sitting) and
Moisés (standing).

Many moons ago: under a new moon, brand new, just barely peeking out, barely enough to make shadows below…

We-are-he arrives. Without needing to consult or check notes, his words begin to draw an image of the gazes of those who rule here, and those whom they obey. When he finishes, we look.

The message from the people is clear, short, simple, blunt. As orders should be.

We, male and female soldiers, don’t say anything, we only look, we think: “This is very big. This doesn’t just belong to us anymore, nor just to the Zapatistas. It doesn’t even belong just to this corner of these lands. It belongs to many corners, in all worlds.”

“We must care for it,” we-are-all [feminine] say, and we know what it is that we are talking about, but we are also talking about we-are-he.

“It will turn out well… but we have to be prepared for it to turn out badly, that is our way in any case,” says we-are-all [masculine].

“So then, we have to prepare it,” we-are-all [feminine] say to ourselves, “take care of it, make it grow.”

“Yes,” we-are-all [masculine] respond to ourselves.

“We must speak with our dead. They will show us the time and the place,” we-are-all [feminine] say to ourselves.

We gaze at our dead, below, we listen to them. We take them this tiny stone. We lay it at the foot of their house. They look at it. We watch them looking at it. They look at us and they take our gaze far, far away, beyond where the calendars and the geographies reach. We see what their gaze shows us. We are silent.

We return, we look at each other, we talk to each other.

“We have to prepare far ahead, prepare each step, prepare each eye, prepare each ear… it will take time.”

“We will have to do something so that they don’t see us, and later something so that they do.”

“In any case they don’t see us, or they see only what they think they see.”

“But yes, we will have to do something… It is my turn.”

“We-are-he will take care of what corresponds to the peoples. We-are-all will look out for things, gently, quietly, hushed, as is our way.”

-*-

A few moons ago, it was raining…

“Already? We thought they would need more time.”

“Well yes, but, that’s the way it is.”

“Okay then, think carefully about what we are going to ask: Do they want others to turn and look at them?”

“They do, they feel strong, they are strong. They say that this belongs to everyone, and to no one. They are ready, they say.”

“But, you realize that not only those who are like us will see those who are like us, but that the Bosses from various places who hate and persecute what we are, will also see?

“Yes, we have taken that into account, we know. It is our turn, your turn.”

“Okay then, then it is only a matter of deciding the place and the time.”

“Here,” a hand gestures to the calendar and the geography.

“The gaze that we provoke will no longer be one of pity, of shame, of compassion, of charity, of hand-outs. There will be happiness for those who are like us, but rage and hate from the Bosses. They will attack us with everything they have.”

“Yes, I told them. But they gazed at each other, and this is what they said: ‘We want to see those who we are, to see ourselves with those who we are, even though neither we nor they know that they are what we are. We want them to see us. We are ready for the Bosses, ready, and waiting.”

“When, where then?” Calendars and maps are spread out on the table.

“At night, when winter awakens.”

“Where?”

“In your heart.”

“Is everything ready?”

“Everything is ready, yes.”

“Okay.”

Everyone went about their tasks. We just shook hands. Nothing more was necessary.

-*-

A few nights ago, the moon sleepless and fading…

“They are ready, that which we look at. The next part will be for other gazes. It’s your turn, we say to we-are-he.

“I’m ready, willing,” says we-are-he.

We-are-all concurs in silence, as is our way.

“When?”

“When our dead speak.”

“Where?”

“In their heart.”

-*-

February 2013. Night. Crescent moon. The hand that we are writes:

“Compañeroas, compañeras y compañeros of the Sixth:

We want to introduce you to one of the many we-are-he that we are, our compañero Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. He guards our door and through his word the we that we are speaks. We ask you to listen to him, that is, that you look at him and thus see us. (…)”

(To be continued…)

From whatever corner of whatever world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
February 2013.

P.S. THAT GIVES NOTICE AND HINTS: The next text, which will appear on the Enlace Zapatista webpage on February 14, the day the we the Zapatistas honor and greet our dead, is principally for our compañeros, compañeras y compañeroas of the Sixth. The complete text can only be read with a password (for which we have given various hints and should be easy to guess) which has already been sent via email wherever we could send it. If you haven’t received it and you can’t figure out the hint (you can find it by reading closely this text and the previous one, “Gaze and Communicate”), you can send an email to the webpage and you will get a response with the password. As we have explained before, the independent media are free to publish, or not, the complete text according to their own autonomous and libertarian considerations. The same goes for whatever compañera, compañero y compañeroa of the Sixth wherever they are. We have no other aim but to let you know that it is you to whom we are talking, and also, importantly, those to whom you decide to extend our gaze.

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

“B Side Players” from San Diego, Califas, with the track “Nuestras Demandas” (our demands). “B Side Players” is composed of Karlos “Solrak” Paez – voice, guitar; Damián DeRobbio – bass; Luis “El General” Cuenca – percussion and voice; Victor Tapia – Congas and percussion; Reagan Branch – Sax; Emmanuel Alarcon – guitar, cuatro puertorriqueño, and voice; Aldo Perretta – charango, tres cubano, jarana veracruzana, ronrroco, cuatro venezolano, kena, zampoña; Russ Gonzales – tenor sax; Mike Benge – Trombone; Michael Cannon – drums; Camilo Moreno – congas and percussion; Jamal Siurano – alto sax; Kevin Nolan – trombone and trumpet; Andy Krier – keyboard; Omar Lopez – base.

_______________________

From Galicia, Spain, the track “EZLN” from the group “Dakidarría,” composed by: Gabri (guitar and lead vocals); Simón: (guitar and vocals); Toñete: (trombone); David: (base and vocals); Juaki: (trumpet and vocals); Anxo: (baritone sax); Charli: (keyboard); Jorge Guerra: (drum set)

________________________

A very special version of the “Himno Zapatista” (Zapatista Hymn) music and voices from “Flor del Fango.” The musical group “Flor del Fango” was composed of: Marucha Castillo – vocals: Napo Romero – vocals, guitar, charango and quena; Alejandro Marassi – bass, vocals, choir and guitarrón; Danie Jamer “el peligroso” – flamenco, folk, and electric guitars and cuatro; Sven Pohlhammer – electric, sinte, and electric acoustic guitars, Cavaquinho y Mandolina; Philippe Teboul “Garbancito” – vocals, drum set, percussion, choir; Patrick Lemarchand – drum set and percussion; Martín Longan – conductor.

Translated from the original Spanish by El Kilombo Intergaláctico, edited by Kristin Bricker.

Them and Us VI: The Gazes 4 by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-02-15T21:52:00.001-06:00

Them and Us

VI.- The Gazes 4.

4.- Look and communicate.

I'm going to tell you something very secret, but don't go around telling it… or do, you decide.

During the first days of our uprising, after the ceasefire, there was a lot of commotion regarding the eezee-elen. It was, of course, all of the media paraphernalia that the right tends to use to impose silence and blood. Some of the arguments that were used back then are the same ones as now, which demonstrates how outdated the right is and how antiquated its thinking is. But that is not a topic for now, and neither is the topic of the press.

But well, now I will tell you that at that time people were starting to say that the EZLN was the first 21th century guerrilla organization (yes, us, who still used sticks to sow the land, who had only heard rumors about yokes and oxen--no offense---, and who only knew about tractors from photographs); that supmarcos was a cybernetic guerrilla who, from the Lacandón Jungle, launched into cyberspace the Zapatista proclamations that would turn the world upside down; and that he had satellite communications in order to coordinate subversive actions that would be carried out all over the world.

Yes, that's what they were saying, but… compas, in the days leading up to the uprising, the "Zapatista cybernetic power" that we had was one of those computers that used those big old floppy disks and it had a DOS version -1.0 operating system. We learned to use it with one of those old tutorials, I don't know if they still exist, that told you what key you should push and there was a voice that said in a Madrid accent, "Very good!"; and if you messed up it told you, "Very bad, idiot, try again!" In addition to playing Pacman, we also used it for the "First Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle," which we reproduced on one on those old dot matrix printers, which made more noise than a machine gun. The paper came on a roll and it jammed all the time, but it had carbon paper, and we managed to print off about two copies every couple of hours. We made a shit-ton of copies, about 100, I think. They were divided up amongst the five commanding groups that would, hours later, take seven municipal seats in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas. In San Cristóbal de Las Casas, which was the one I was supposed to take, once the plaza had fallen to our forces, we used masking tape to hang up the 15 copies that were ours. Yes, I know that that doesn't add up, that there should have been five, but who knows where the missing five ended up.

Well, when we pulled out of San Cristóbal, in the pre-dawn hours of January 2, 1994, the wet fog that covered our withdrawal unstuck the proclamations from the cold walls of the magnificent colonial city, and some floated around the streets.

Years later someone told me that anonymous hands had snatched some and that they were kept carefully guarded.

Then came the Cathedral Dialogues. At that time I had one of those portable lightweight computers (it weighed six kilos without the battery), "Scrap" brand, 128 ram, and I mean 128 kb of ram, 10 mb hard drive, I mean, it could save e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, and a really fast processor that, when you turned it on, you could go prepare your coffee, come back, and you could still re-heat your coffee, 7 times 7, before being able to start to write. A fantastic machine. In the mountains, to make it work we would use a power inverter connected to a car battery. Later, our Zapatista Department of Advanced Technology designed a contraption that would make the computer run off of D batteries, but it weighed more than the computer and, I suspect, had something to do with the PC expiring with a sudden flash, yes, very flashy, and a plume of smoke that kept the mosquitos away for the next three days. The satellite telephone that the Sup used to communicate with "international terrorism?" A walkie-talkie with a maximum range of 400 meters on flat land (there should be some photos still around of the "cybernetic guerrilla", ha!) So internet? In February 1995, when the federal military was pursuing us (and not for an interview), the portable PC was tossed into the first stream that we forded, and the communiques from that era were made on a manual typewriter that the ejidal commissioner from one of the towns that protected us loaned to us.

That was the powerful high technology equipment that we the "21st century cybernetic guerrillas" possessed at that time.

I'm really sorry if, in addition to my battered ego, I am destroying some illusions that some might have had, but that's how it was, exactly as I am telling you now.

Finally, afterwards we learned that…

A young student in Texas, USA, perhaps a "nerd" (as you would call him), made a web page and he called it only "ezln." That was the EZLN's first web page. And this compa began to "upload" there all of the communiques and letters that were being published in the written press. People from other parts of the world, who learned of the uprising from photos, images, and video recordings, or from news articles, looked there for our word.

We never met that compa. Or maybe we did.

Maybe one time he came down to Zapatista lands, just like any other. If he did come, he never said: "I'm the one who made the EZLN's page." Nor: "Thanks to me people all over the world know about you." And certainly not, "I've come so that you might thank me and pay me homage."

He could have done it, and the thanks would have been few, but he never did.

And maybe you don't know, but sometimes there are people like that. Good people who do things without asking for anything in return, without payment, "without a commotion," as we say, we the Zapatistas.

And then the world kept on spinning. Some compas came who did know about computation, and other pages were created and we are how we are now. That is, with a damn server that doesn't run like it should, not even when we sing and dance "the colored monkey" to a cumbia-corrido-ranchera-norteña-tropical-ska-rap-punk-rock-ballad-popular rhythm.

Also without creating a commotion, we thank that compa; may the firstest gods and/or the higher being in which he believes or doubts or disbelieves bless him.

We don't know what became of that compa. Perhaps he is an Anonymous. Perhaps he's still surfing the web, searching for a noble cause to support. Perhaps he's disregarded due to his appearance, perhaps he's different, perhaps his neighbors, his co-workers or classmates look at him suspiciously.

Or perhaps he's a normal person, one of the millions who walk in the world without anyone recording what they do, without anyone watching them.

And perhaps he manages to read what I'm telling you, and he reads what we write you now:

"Compa, now there's schools here where before only ignorance grew; there's food, but not very dignified, where at the tables hunger was the only daily guest; there's relief where the only medicine for pain was death. I don't know if you were expecting it. Perhaps you knew. Perhaps you saw something of the future in those words that you relaunched out into cyberspace. Or perhaps not, perhaps you just did it because you felt that it was your duty. And duty, we Zapatistas know a lot about it, it is the only slavery that is embraced under our own free will.

We learned. And I'm not talking about learning the importance of communication or of knowing the ways of the sciences and techniques of information technology. For example, aside from Durito, none of us has been able to solve the challenge of making a tweet communique. Faced with 140 characters, I'm not only useless, falling and refalling back on the commas, (the parentheses), the dots… and my life is passing me by and I lack characters. I think it is improbable that I could one day do it. Durito, for example, has proposed a communique that stays within the tweet limit and says:

123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 1234567890

But the problem is that the code to decipher the message occupies the equivalent of the 7 volumes of the "The Differences" encyclopedia, which all of humanity has been writing ever since its regretful walk over earth began, and whose editing has been vetted by the Power.

No. What we learned is that there are people out there, far away or close, whom we don't know, who perhaps doesn't know us, who are compas. And it's not because they have participated in a support march, have visited a Zapatista community, wear a red bandana around their neck, or have signed a printout, a registration sheet, a membership card, or whatever it's called.

It's because the Zapatistas know that just as there are many worlds that inhabit the world, there are also many forms, ways, times, and places to struggle against the beast, without requesting or expecting anything in return.

We send you a hug, compa, wherever you are. I am sure that you can answer the question that one asks him or herself when s/he begins to walk: "Will it be worth it?"

Perhaps later you find out that in a community or in a base, a Zapatista computer lab is called "he," just like that, in lowercase. And perhaps you find out later that if one of the invited people ran into the lab, stopped in front of the sign, and asked who was that "he," we responded: "we don't know, but he does."

Ok then. Cheers, and yes, it was worth it, I think.

From etc. etc.

We Zapatistas from the eezee-elen dot com dot org dot net or dot whatever it's called."

-*-

And all of that is relevant because perhaps you all have realized that we place a lot of trust in the free and/or independent media, or whatever it's called, and in the people, groups, collectives, organizations that have their own ways of communicating. People, groups, collectives, organizations that have their web pages, their blogs, or whatever they're called, who give a place for our word and now, the music and images that accompany it. And people or groups who perhaps don't even have a computer, but even if it's just chatting, or with a flier, or a broadsheet, or graffiti or a notebook or public transportation, or in a play, a video, a homework assignment, a song, a dance, a poem, a painting, a book, a letter, they look at the letters that our collective heart sketches.

If they don't belong to us, if they're not an organic part of ourselves, if we don't give them orders, if we don't command them, if they're autonomous, independent, free (which means that they command themselves) or whatever it's called, why do they do it then?

Perhaps because they think that information is everyone's right, and that everyone has the responsibility of what they do or undo with that information. Perhaps because they are in solidarity and they have the commitment to support in that way whoever also struggles, even if it's with other methods. Perhaps because they feel the duty to do it.

Or perhaps because of all of that and more.

They will know. And surely they have it there written, on their website, their blog, in their declaration of principles, on their flier, in their song, on their wall, in their notebook, in their heart.

That is, I'm talking about those who communicate and with others they communicate that which they feel in our hearts, that is, they listen. From who looks at us and looks at themselves thinking about us and they turn into a bridge and then they discover that those words that they write, sing, repeat, transform are not the Zapatistas', that they never were, that they're yours, everyone's and no one's, and that they are part of one score that who knows where it's at, and then you discover or confirm that when you look at us looking at ourselves looking at you, you are touching and talking about something bigger for which there still isn't an alphabet, and that isn't in that way belonging to a group, collective, organization, sect, religion, or whatever it's called, but rather that you are understanding that the step towards humanity is now called "rebellion."

Perhaps, before you click on your decision to put our word on your spaces, you'll ask yourselves, "Will it be worth it?" Perhaps you ask yourselves if you wouldn't be contributing to Marcos being on a European beach, enjoying the wonderful climate of these calendars in those geographies. Perhaps you ask yourselves if you wouldn't be serving an invention of "the beast" to fool people and simulate rebellion. Perhaps you respond to yourselves that the answer to that question of "Will it be worth it?" lies with us, the Zapatistas, and that by clicking on the computer, the spray can, the pencil, the guitar, the CD, the camera, you're committing us to respond "yes." And then you click on "upload" or "publish" or "load" or the first chord or the first step-color-verse, or whatever it's called.

And perhaps you don't know, even though I think it's obvious, but you're really cutting us a "break" as they say around here. And I'm not saying that because our page "goes down" sometimes, as if it were in a mosh pit and when it dove off the stage there weren't any comradely hand to relieve the fall that, if it is on cement, will keep hurting without its calendar or geography mattering. I point that out because on the other side of our word there are many people who don't agree and they say so; there's even more who don't agree and don't even bother to say so; there are a few who do agree and who say so; and there's a few more of those few who do agree and don't say so; and there's the great immense majority, who don't even know about it. It's those last ones who we want to talk to, that is, look at, that is, listen to.

-*-

Compas, thank you. We know. But we're sure that even if we didn't know, you know. And that is precisely what we the Zapatistas believe is what all this about changing the world is all about.

(To be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
February 2013.

P.S.- Yes, perhaps there is, in the letter to him, a clue to the next password.

P.S. THAT UNNECESSARILY CLARIFIES.- We don't have a Twitter or Facebook account, nor an email, nor a phone number, nor a post office box. Those that appear on the web site are those of the site, and these compas support us and send us what they receive, just as they send out what we send them. Moreover, we're against copyright, so anyone can have their Twitter, their Facebook, or whatever it's called, and use our names, although, of course, they are not us nor do they represent us. But, according to what they've told me, most of them clarify that they are not who they supposedly are. And the truth is that we have a lot of fun imagining the quantity of derision and insults (which aren't minty*) they've received and will receive, originally directed at the eezee-elen and/or whom it may concern.

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

Listen to and watch the videos that accompany this text.

From Japan, the song and dance "Ya Basta" [Enough] by Pepe Hasegawa. It was presumably presented in the prefecture of Nagano, Japan, in 2010. The truth is that I don't know exactly what the lyrics say, I just hope that they're not insults that aren't minty.*

___________________________

From Sweden, ska with the group Ska'n'ska, from Stockholm. The song is called "Ya Basta" and it appears on their album "Gunshot Fanfare."

_____________________________

From Sicily, Italy, the band Skaramanzia with the song "Para no olividar" [To not forget], part of their album "La lucha sigue" [The struggle goes on].

____________________________

From France.- "Ya Basta - EZLN" with the band Ska Oi. From the album "Lucha y fiesta" [Struggle and party].

Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Note:
* A play on words that only makes sense in Spanish. "Mentada" is insult, but it also sort of sounds like "menta," which means mint.

Them and Us Part VI: The Gazes Part 3: Some Other Gazes by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-02-09T01:47:00.000-06:00

Them and Us

VI. The Gazes 3.

3.- Some other gazes.

one: A dream in that gaze.

Photo: Moysés Zúñiga,
Desinformémonos

It's a street, a milpa, a factory, a mine shaft, a forest, a school, a department store, an office, a plaza, a market, a city, a field, a country, a continent, a world.

The Ruler is seriously wounded, the machine broken, the beast exhausted, the savage locked up.

The changes in name and flags didn't work at all, the beatings, the prisons, the cemeteries, the money flowing through corruption's thousand arteries, the "reality shows," the religious celebrations, the paid newspaper articles[1], the cybernetic exorcisms.

The Ruler calls for his last overseer. He murmurs something into his ear. The overseer goes out to confront the masses.

He says, asks, demands, requires:

"We want to speak with the man…"

Doubt crosses his face, the majority of those who are confronting him are women.

He corrects himself:

"We want to speak with the woman…"

He doubts himself again, there's more than a few "others" who are confronting him.

He corrects himself again:

"We want to speak with whomever is in charge."

From amongst the silence an elderly person and a child step forward, they stand in front of the overseer and, with an innocent and wise voice, they say:

"Here everyone is in charge."

The overseer shudders, and the Ruler's voice during his last scream shudders.

The gaze wakes up. "Weird dream," is said. And, without the geography or the calendar mattering, life, struggle, resistance goes on.

S/he only remembers a few words from the odd dream:

"Here everyone is in charge."

two: Other gaze from another calendar and another geography.

(fragment of a letter received in the eezeelen military headquarters, no date)

"Greetings, Compas.

(…)

My opinion is that everything was really fucking cool. But I do not deny that all of this is in retrospective. It would be very easy to say that I perfectly understood the silence and nothing surprised me. False, I also became impatient with the silence (of course that has nothing to do with what is said about how before the Zapatistas weren't speaking, I did read all of the denouncements).[2] The issue is that when seen with the advantage of what has already happened, and what is happening, well, of course the conclusion is logical: we are in the middle of a more daring initiative, at least since the Zapatistas' insurrection. And this has to do with everything, not just with the national situation but also with the international situation, I believe.

Let me tell you what I understood about something which, it seemed to me, was the most significant moment of the [December 21, 2012] action. Of course there are many things: the organization, the militant strength, the show of force, the presence of young people and women, etc. But what really impressed me the most was that they were carrying some boards and that when they arrived at the plazas they made some stages. According to what was said about what went on, many private media outlets, and some of the independent ones, speculated about the arrival of the Zapatista leaders. They didn't realize that the Zapatista leaders were already there. They were the people who got up onto the stage and said, without speaking, here we are, this is who we are and this is who we will be.

Those who should have been on the stage were there. Nobody has noticed, I think, that moment and, nonetheless, I think, there it is, in a nutshell, the profound significance of a new way of doing politics. That which breaks with all that is old, the only truly new, the only thing that is worth having [illegible in the original] "XXI century."

The plebeian and freedom-loving soul of those timely moments in history, has been built here without theoretical grandstanding. Rather, with a practical burying. It has been there for too many years to be just a fancy. It is already a long and solid historical social process in the terrain of self-organization.

At the end they picked up their stage, turned it once again into boards, and we should all be a little ashamed and be more modest and simple and recognize that something unexpected and new is in front of our eyes and that we should look, shut up, listen, and learn.

Hugs all around. I hope that you're alright, all things considered.

El Chueco [Crooked]"

three: "Instructions for what to do in the case… that they look at you"

If someone looks at him, looks at her, and you realize that…

He doesn't look at you as if you were transparent.

He doesn't want to convince you yes or no.

He doesn't want to co-opt you.

He doesn't want to recruit you.

He doesn't want to give you orders.

He doesn't want to judge you-condemn you-absolve you.

He doesn't want to use you.

He doesn't want to tell you what you can or can't do.

He doesn't want to give you advice, recommendations, orders.

He doesn't want to reproach you because you don't know, or because you do know.

He doesn't look down on you.

He doesn't want to tell you what you should or shouldn't do.

He doesn't want to buy your old car, your face, your body, your future, your dignity, your free will.

He doesn't want to sell you anything...

(a time share, a 4D LCD television, a super-ultra-hyper-modern machine with an instant crisis button (warning: don't confuse it with the ejection button, because the warranty doesn't include amnesia due to ridiculous media stunts), a political party that changes its ideology as the wind blows, a life insurance policy, an encyclopedia, a VIP entrance to the performance or the revolution or whatever heaven is fashionable right now, furniture in small installments, a cell phone plan, an exclusive membership, a future given as a gift from the generous leader, the excuse to give up, sell out, throw in the towel, a new ideological paradigm, etc.).

So…

First.- Rule out if it was a degenerate man or woman. You can be as dirty, ugly, bad, rude, as you want, but, whatever it is, you have this sexy and horny touch that comes from working really hard; and that "that" can awaken anyone's most carnal passions. Mmm… well, yes, a little hairstyling wouldn't be too much. If it wasn't a degenerate man or woman, don't lose heart, the world is round and it spins, and see below (this list, understand).

Second.- Are you sure that he is looking at you? Couldn't it be that deodorant ad that was behind you (you, understand)? Or could it be that he's thinking (him, the one that's looking at you, understand): "I think that's how I look when I don't comb my hair"? If you have ruled that out, continue.

Third.- Doesn't he look like a cop looking to complete the payment that he has to report to his superior? If yes, run, there's still time to not lose the cost of the ticket. If not, go on to the next point.

Fourth.- Return his gaze, fiercely. A gaze that's a mix of anger, stomach ache, annoyance, and the "look" of a serial killer will work. No, that makes you look like a constipated bear cub. Try again. Ok, passable, but keep practicing. Now, he doesn't flee terrified? He doesn't divert his gaze? He doesn't get closer to you exclaiming, "uncle juancho! I didn't recognize you! But with that gesture…"? No? Ok, continue.

Fifth.-Repeat the first, second, third, and fourth steps. There could be problems with our system (which, of course, is made in China). If you come back to this point again, go on to the next one:

Sixth.- There's a high probability that you have run into someone from the Sixth. We don't know if we should congratulate you or send you our sympathies. In any case, what follows that gaze is your decision and your responsibility.

fourth: A gaze at a Zapatista post.

(calendar and geography not specified)

SupMarcos: "You have to hurry because time is running out."

The female health insurgent: "Hey, Sup, time isn't running out, people are running out. Time comes from far away and follows its path allll the way over there, where we can't look at it. And we are like little pieces of time, that is, time can't march on without us. We are what makes time march on, and when we come to an end along comes another and s/he pushes time along for another bit, until it arrives at where it needs to arrive, but we're not going to look where it arrives but rather others are going to see if gets there alright or if suddenly it couldn't summon up enough strength to arrive and it has to be pushed again, until it arrives."

(…)

The female infantry captain: "And why did it take you so long?"

The female health insurgent: "It's that I was chatting about politics with the Sup, I was helping him to explain well that it's important to look far away, to where neither time nor gazes can reach us."

The female infantry captain: "Uh-huh, and then?"

The female health insurgent: He punished me because I didn't hurry the work and he sent me to the clinic.

(…)

fifth: Extract of the "Notes to gaze upon winter."

(…)

And yes, all of them got up on the stage with their fists held high. But they didn't look very well. They didn't look at the gaze of those men and women. They didn't look at when they were crossing up [on the stage], they turned their gaze down below and they saw their tens of thousands of compañeros. That is, they looked at themselves. Up there they didn't look at us looking at us. Up there they didn't understand, nor will they understand anything.

six: Put your gaze here (or your insults, even if they aren't minty).[3]

—————————————————————————————————————————–

(To be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos.

Planet Earth.

Mexico, February 2013.

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

Listen to and watch the videos that accompany this text.

Daniel Viglietti and Mario Benedetti to a "duet" interpretation of the song "La Llamarada" and Benedetti's poem "Pregón." Concert in Montevideo, Uruguay, Latin America, Planet Earth. At the beginning, Daniel takes a moment to recognize all of those who are not on the stage but who make it possible that Daniel and Mario are. Almost at the end, you can hear Mario Benedetti singing, singing to himself, singing to us, and without the calendar and geography mattering, and vice versa.

______________________________________

Amparanoia plays "Somos Viento." At one point, Amparo Sánchez says "Ik´otik," which in tzeltal means "we are the wind ("somos viento)."

_______________________________________

Amparo Ochoa, whose voice still reverberates through our mountains, singing "Quien tiene la voz (Who Has the Voice)" by Gabino Palomares.

Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Notes:

Some Mexican newspapers run articles that someone (often a branch of the government) pays for. In the case of La Jornada, the only thing that sets the "paid insertions" apart from genuine news articles is that a "paid insertion" headline is in italics.
Referring to the fact that while most media outlets report that the Zapatistas are breaking some sort of silence, they really haven't been silent. They've been sending out a steady stream of denouncements against the government and antagonistic organizations.
Play on words that only makes sense in Spanish. "Mentada" is insult, but it also sort of sounds like "menta," which means mint.

Them and Us Part VI: Gazes, Second Part: Gazing and Listening From/Towards Below by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-02-08T01:22:00.000-06:00

Them and Us

VI.-The Gazes 2.

2.-Gaze and listen from/towards below.

Can we still choose towards where and from where to look?

Can we, for example, choose between looking at those who work at the supermarket chain store, ream out the workers for being complicit in the electoral fraud[1], and publicly ridicule the orange uniforms the employees are forced to wear, or look at the employee who, after cashing out…?


Election propaganda and grocery gift cards.

/The cashier goes and takes off her orange apron, grumbling with anger over how they reamed her out for being complicit in the fraud that brought ignorance and frivolousness to Power. She, a woman, young or mature or mother or single or divorced or widow or single mother or expecting or without children or whatever, who goes to work at 7 in the morning and leaves at 4 in the afternoon, of course, if there isn't overtime, and not counting the time between home and work and back again, and after giving school or work the "work-suitable-for-her-sex-that-can-be-completed-with-a-little-bit-of-flirtation," she read in one of the magazines that are next to the register one day when there weren't many customers. To her, whom those are supposedly going to save, it's nothing more than a question of a vote and done, ta-da, happiness. "Do you really think the owners wear an orange apron?" she irritatedly murmurs. She fixes herself up a bit from the purposeful untidiness with which she goes to work so that the manager doesn't bother her. She leaves. Outside her partner is waiting. They embrace, kiss, touch each other with their gazes, they walk. They enter a cyber cafe or whatever you call it. 10 pesos per hour, 5 pesos for a half-hour.../

"Half hour," they say, mentally calculating the budget-time-from-the-metro-bus-walk.

"Spot me some money, Roco, don't be a jerk," he says.

"Ok, but come by on payday, because if not, the owner will be all over me and you'll be the one who will be spotting me money."

"Ok, but it'll be when you get a cell phone, dude, because I'm working at a car wash."

"Well, wash it, dude," says Roco.

The three of them laugh.

"7," says Roco.

"Ok, look for it," she says.

He goes to enter a number.

"No," she says, "look for when it all began."

They navigate. They get to where there are just over 131.[2] They play the video.

"They're bourgeois," he says.

"Settle down, revolutionary vanguard. You've got something wrong with your head if you judge people by their appearances. Just because I have light skin they call me güerita and bourgeois, and they don't see that I live paycheck-to-paycheck. It's important to see each person's history and what they do, dummy," she says, smacking him upside the head.

They keep watching.

They watch, they shut up, they listen.

"So they told Peña Nieto all that to his face… they're brave, yes, it's obvious they've got balls," he says.

"Or ovaries, idiot," and another smack from her for him.

"Watch out, my queen, I'm going to accuse you of inter-familial violence."

"It would be gender violence, idiot," and another smack.

They finish watching the video.

Him: "So that's how things start, with a few people who aren't afraid."

Her: "Or they are afraid, but they get it under control."

"Half an hour!" Roco yells at them.

"Yes, let's watch it."

She goes smiling.

"And now what are you laughing about?"

"Nothing, I was remembering," she gets closer to him, "what you said about 'inter-familial.' Do you mean that you want us to be a family?"

He doesn't miss a beat:

"That's right, my queen, later is late, we're already getting there, but without so many smacks, kisses instead, and more below and to the left."

"Hey, don't talk dirty to me, dude!" another smack. "And enough of 'my queen,' aren't we against fucking monarchy?"

Him, before the strong smack: "Well, yes my… plebeian."

She laughs, him too. After a couple of steps, she says:

"And do you think the Zapatistas will invite us?"

"Of course, Vins is my buddy and he said that he's tight with sockface because he let him win at Mortal Kombat, on the little machines, so all we have to do is say that we're friends with Vins and done," he argues enthusiastically.

"And do you think I'll be able to bring my mom? She's already pretty old…"

"Of course, speaking of witches, if I'm lucky my future mother-in-law will get stuck in the mud," he ducks his head expecting a smack that doesn't come.

Her, angry now:

"And what the hell are the Zapatistas going to give us if they're so far away? Do you really think they're going to give me a raise, make people respect me, make it so fucking men don't look at my butt on the street, and that the fucking boss stops looking for excuses to touch me? Are they going to give me money so I can make rent, so I can buy clothing for my daughter, my son? Are they going to lower the price of sugar, beans, rice, oil? Are they going to put food on my table? Will they stand up to the cop that comes around everyday to bother and demand money from the people in the neighborhood who sell pirated discs saying that it's so they don't report them to Mr. or Mrs. Sony…?"

"It's not 'pirate,' it's 'alternative production,' my quee….my plebeian. And don't get all huffy with me because we're in the same boat."

But she's already on a roll, so no one can stop her:

"And you, are they going to give you back your job at the plant, where you were qualified as a who-the-hell-knows-what? Are they going to validate your classes, the training courses, and all that so that the asshole of a boss takes the company to I don't know where, and the union and the strike, everything that you did, to later end up washing cars? Or like your brother, El Chompis, whose work they took away and they disappeared the company so that he can't defend himself and the government with its same old babble that it's to improve service and world class and blah blah blah and did they really lower the rates, no, they're more expensive, and the fucking lights go out all the time[3] and fucking Calderón goes to shamelessly teach classes to gringos[4], who are the masters of all this shit. And my Dad, may he rest in peace, who went to work on the other side [of the US-Mexico border], not to do the tourist thing, but to make money, dough, moolah, to take care of us when we were younger and there crossing the line the migra came down on him as if he were a terrorist and not an honorable worker and they didn't even give us his body and that fucking Obama, it seems as though his heart is the color of the dollar."

"Damn, stop your car and pull over, my plebeian."

"It's just that every time I think about it I get mad, working so much so that in the end those above keep everything, the only thing that's left to privatize is laughter, although I doubt they'd privatize that, because there's not much, but tears, yes, there's an abundance of those and they get rich… richer. And then you come along with your stuff about the Zapatistas here and Zapatistas there, and below and to the left and the eighth…"

"The Sixth, not the eighth," he interrupts.

"Whatever, those dudes are far away and they speak Spanish worse than you."

"Hey, hey, don't be mean."

She wipes away her tears and murmurs: "Fucking rain, it ruined my esteelauder, and I'd fixed myself up all nice for you."

"Boyeeeee, I like you even better with nothing on."

They laugh.

Her, very serious: "Ok now, let's see, tell me, are those Zapatistas going to save us?"

"No, my plebeian, they aren't going to save us. That and other things we have to do for ourselves."

"Well then?"

"Ah, well, they're going to teach us."

"What are they going to teach us?"

"That we're not alone."

She remains silent for a moment. Then:

"Nor alone[4], dummy,"another smack.

The collective van looks like it's going to explode with people. We'll see if the next one has room.

It's cold, it's raining. They embrace each other more, not so that they don't get wet, but rather so they get wet together.

Far away someone is waiting, there's always someone who is waiting. And while he waits, with an old pencil case and an old and shabby notebook, he keeps track of the gazes from below that are seen in a window.

(To be continued...)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
"The Nobodies," based on the text of the same name by Eduardo Galeano. Played by La Gran Orquesta Republicana, a ska-fusion band, Mallorca, Spanish State. Members: Javier Vegas, Nacho Vegas: sax. Nestor Casas: trumpet. Didac Buscató: trombone. Juan Antonio Molina: electric guitar. Xema Bestard: bass. José Luis García: drums.

_______________________________________

Liliana Daunes narrates a very other story called "Always and Never Against Sometimes." Greetings to the Chiapas Solidarity Network, which struggles and resists right here in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Latin America, Planet Earth.

_______________________________________

"Minimum Wage," by Oscar Chávez and Los Morales.

Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Notes:

Enrique Peña Nieto allegedly bought votes with grocery store gift cards with the full knowledge of the supermarket chain in question.
Refers to the #YoSoy132 movement against Enrique Peña Nieto, sparked when 131 university students organized a protest against his visit to their campus.
Refers to former President Felipe Calderón busting the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME).
Calderón teaches at Harvard now.
Many Spanish speakers have noted the sexism they argue is inherent in the need to feminize and masculinize nouns and adjectives. The Zapatistas in particular look for ways to use more inclusive language, and this exchanges makes reference to that. When the boyfriend says that the Zapatistas will teach us "That we're not alone" he says "Que no estamos solos," using the masculine form of alone (solos), which, according to the rules is what one does in mixed company. So his girlfriend responds, "Ni solas," saying that women are also not alone.

Them and Us Part VI: The Gazes by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-02-07T16:28:00.001-06:00

Them and Us

VI.- The Gazes

1.- Gaze to impose or gaze to listen.

For once I will be able to say

Without anyone saying otherwise

That it is not the same to desire

As it is to covet something

Just as they're not the same words

Said to listen

And said to be obeyed

Nor is it the same to speak to me

To tell me something

As it is to speak to me so that I shut up.

Tomás Segovia.

"Fourth Search" in "Searches and Other Poems" from the publishing house that has the good sense to call itself "No Name."

Thank you and hugs to María Luisa Capella, to Inés and Francisco

(thank goodness for the dignified blood that beats through their hearts)

for the books and the lyrics guide.

To gaze is a form of asking, we say, we the Zapatistas.

Or of searching…

When one gazes at the calendar and at the geography, even though they might be far away from each other, one asks, one interrogates.

And it is in the act of gazing where the other appears. And it is in the gaze where that other exists, where its profile as strange, as outsider, as enigma, as victim, as judge and executioner, as enemy….or as friend is drawn.

It is in the gaze where fear nests, but also where respect can be born.

If we don't learn to gaze at another's gaze, what is the point of our gaze, our questions?

Who are you?

    What is your history?

            Where do you hurt?

                What are your hopes?

But it doesn't just matter what or who is gazed upon. Also, and above all, it matters from where one is gazing from.

And to choose where to gaze at is also to choose from where.

Or is it the same to gaze from above at the pain of those who lost those whom they love and need, due to absurd, inexplicable, definitive death, as it is to gaze at it from below?

When someone from above gazes upon those below and asks himself, "How many are there?", in reality he's asking, "How much are they worth?"

If if they aren't worth anything, what does it matter how many there are? To get that untimely number out of the way there are the corporate media outlets, the militaries, the police, the judges, the prisons, the cemeteries.

And for our gaze, the answers are never simple.

To gaze upon ourselves gazing at that which we gaze at, we give ourselves an identity that has to do with pains and struggles, with our calendars and our geography.

Our strength, if we do have some, is in this recognition: we are who we are, and there are others who are who they are, and there is other for those of us who don't have a word to name it and, nonetheless, is who he is. When we say "we" we are not absorbing, and in that way subordinating, identities, but rather highlighting the bridges that exist between the different pains and distinct rebelliousnesses. We are the same because we are different.

In the Sixth, the Zapatistas reiterate our rejection of any attempt at hegemony, that is, all vanguardism, be it that we're out in front or that they line us up, as they have throughout these centuries, in the rearguard.

If with the Sixth we seek out people like us in their pains and struggles, without the calendars and geographies that distance us mattering, it is because we know well that the Ruler[1] isn't beaten with just a thought, just one strength, just one directive (no matter how revolutionary, principled, radical, ingenious, numerous, powerful, etc. that directive might be).

It is the lesson of our dead that diversity and difference are not weaknesses for below, but rather strength to give birth, on the ashes of the old, to the new world we want, that we need, that we deserve.

We know well that that world isn't just imagined by us. But in our dream, that world isn't one, but rather many, different, diverse. And its richness lies in its diversity.

The repeated attempts to impose unanimity are responsible for the machine going crazy and getting closer, every minute, to the final minute of civilization as we know it up to now.

In the current phase of neoliberal globalization, homogeneity is just mediocrity imposed like a universal uniform. And if anything sets it apart from Hitler's craziness, it isn't its goal, but rather in the modernity of the manners in which it is achieved.

-*-

And yes, it's not just us that seeks the how, when, where, what.

You all, for example, are not Them. Well, even though you[2] don't appear to have any problem allying themselves with Them to… deceive them and bring them down from the inside? To be like Them but not so Them? To lower the machine's speed, to file down the beast's fangs, to humanize the savage?

Yes, we know. There's a mountain of arguments to support that. You could even come up with some examples.

But…

You tell us that we're equals, that we're in the same situation, that it is the same struggle, the same enemy… Hmm…. no, you don't say "enemy," you say "adversary." Sure, that also depends on the context.

You tell us that we must all unite because there is no other path: either elections or weapons. And you, who in that false argument justify your project of invalidating all of that which does not subject itself to the reiterated spectacle of the politics from above, you give us an ultimatum: die or give up. And you even offer us the alibi, because, you argue, since it's about taking Power, there's only two paths.

Ah! And we're so disobedient: we didn't die, nor did we give up. And, as was demonstrated the day the world ended[3]: neither electoral politics nor armed struggle.

And if it's not about taking Power? Better yet, and if the Power no longer resides in that Nation-State, that Zombie State populated by a parasite political class that pillages the nations' remains?

And if the voters that you obsess over so much (that's why you're captivated by the multitudes) don't do anything but vote for someone who others already elected, as time after time They demonstrate while they have fun with every new trick they play?

Yes, of course, you hide behind your prejudices: those who don't vote? "It's due to apathy, disinterest, lack of education, they play into the hands of the right"… your ally in so many geographies, in not just a few calendars. They vote but not for you? "It's because they're rightwing, ignorant, sellouts, traitors, dying of hunger, they're zombies!"

Note from Marquitos Spoil: Yes, we sympathize with the zombies. Not just because we look like them (we don't even need makeup and we'd still kick butt in the casting of "The Walking Dead"). Also and above all because we think, like George A. Romero, that in a zombie apocalypse, the craziest brutality would be the work of the surviving civilization, not of the walking dead. And if some vestige of humanity were to remain, it would shine in those who are already the pariahs, the living dead for whom the apocalypse begins at birth and never ends. Just as is happening right now in any corner of any of the worlds that exist. And there is no movie, nor television series that tells its story.

Your gaze is marked by disdain when you look at something (even if it's at the mirror) and of breaths of envy when you look above.

You can't even imagine someone who would be interested in gazing at that "above" for no other reason than to see how to get it off of him.

-*-

Gaze. Towards where and from where. There is that which separates us.

You think that you are the only ones, we know that we're one more.

You look above, we look below.

You look at how you can make yourselves useful, we look how to make ourselves useful.

You look at how to lead, we look at how to accompany.

You look at how much is won, we look at how much is lost.

You look at what it is, we look at what it can be.

You look at numbers, we look at people.

You calculate statistics, we calculate histories.

You talk, we listen.

You look at how you look, we look at the gaze.

You look at us and you ream us out for where we were when your calendar was marked with your "historical" urgencies. We look at you and we don't ask where you have been during these past 500 years of history.

You look at how to take advantage of the current situation, we look at how to create it.

You worry about broken windows, we worry about the rage that broke them.

You look at the many, we look at the few.

You look at insurmountable walls, we look at cracks.

You look at possibilities, we look at that which is impossible only until the eve.

You look for mirrors, we look for crystals.

You and we are not the same.

-*-

You look at the calendar of above and you use it to condition the spring of the mobilizations, the masses, the party, the multitude's rebelliousness, the streets bursting with songs and colors, chants, challenges, those who are already many more than just one hundred and thirty-something[4], the full plazas, the ballot boxes anxious to be filled with votes, and you run quickly because clearly-they-lack-revolutionary-party-leadership-a-politics-of-ample-and-flexible-alliances-because-electoral-politics-is-their-natural-destiny-but-they're-very-young-they're-bourgeois-petitbugies-kids- / -later-lumpen-hoodrats-crew-prole-number-of-potential-voters-potentials-ignorant-novice-ingenious-naive-clumsy-stubborn, above all, stubborn. And you see in each massive act the culmination of the times. And afterwards, when there's no longer crowds anxious for a leader, nor ballot boxes, nor parties, you decide that it's over, no more, to see if there will be another occasion, that we have to wait six years[5], six centuries, that we have to look the other way, but always at the calendar of above: the registration, the alliances, the positions.

And we, always with a crooked gaze, we surmount the calendar, we look for the winter, we swim upriver, we pass through the stream, we arrive at the spring. There we see who begins, those who are few, the lessors. We don't speak to them, we don't greet them, we don't tell them what to do, we don't tell them what not to do. Instead, we listen to them, we look at them with respect, with admiration. And maybe they never notice that small red flower, which looks just like a star, so small that it is barely a pebble, that our hand leaves below, close to their left foot. Not because that's how we want to tell them that the flower-rock was ours, the Zapatistas'. Not so that they take that pebble and they throw it at something, at someone, although there isn't a lack of willingness or reasons why. Rather, maybe because it is our way of telling them, them and all of our compas in the Sixth, that the homes and the worlds begin to be built with small pebbles and later they grow and almost nobody remembers those little pieces of rock that start out so small, so nothing, so useless, so alone, and along comes a Zapatista, and she looks at the pebble and she greets it and she sits down beside it and they don't speak, because little rocks, like Zapatistas, don't speak… until they do speak, and then it becomes a matter of if they shut up. And no, they never shut up, what happens is that sometimes there's not anyone to listen to them. Or maybe because we looked beyond the calendar and we knew, before, that this night would come. Or maybe because that's what we told them, even though they don't know it, but we know it, hat they're not alone. Because its with the few that things get started and restarted.

-*-

You didn't see us before… and you still don't look at us.

And, above all, you didn't see us watching you.

You didn't see us watching you in your arrogance, stupidly destroying the bridges, digging up the roads, allying yourselves with our persecutors, disdaining us. Convincing yourselves that that which does not exist in the media simply does not exist.

You didn't see us watching you say and say to yourselves that you were standing on solid ground, that what is possible is solid terrain, that you cut the moorings of that absurd boat of absurdities and impossibilities, and that it was those crazies (us) who stayed adrift, isolated, alone, without a destination, paying with our existence the being principled.

You could see the resurgence as part of your victories, and now you ruminate it as one of your losses.

Go, continue on your path.

Don't listen to us, don't look at us.

Because with the Sixth and with the Zapatistas it is not possible to look nor listen with impunity.

And that is our virtue or our curse, depending on where you're looking towards and, above all, from where the gaze is extended.

(to be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos.

Planet Earth.

February 2013.

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

Reoffenders. Sevilla rock group, Spanish State. Manuel J. Pizarro Fernández: Drums. Fernando Madina Pepper: Bass and vocals. Juan M. Rodríguez Barea: Guitar and vocals. Finito de Badajoz "Candy": Guitar and vocals. Carlos Domíngez Reinhardt: Sound tech. Rock version of "I call you freedom" in a video dedicated to the heroic struggle of the Mapuche People.

_____________________________

Eduardo Galeano narrates a story from Old Antonio: "The History of the Gazes."

______________________________

Joan Manuel Serrat singing "The South Also Exists" by Mario Benedetti, in concert in Argentina, Latin America. When he stops singing, Serrat goes behind the curtains and brings Mario Benedetti, so beloved to us, out to the stage (minute 3:01 onward).

Translation from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Notes:

In previous parts of "Them and Us," the Ruler referred to the United States government.
In the original Spanish it isn't clear if this is supposed to be translated as plural "you" or "they," which in this case is written the same in Spanish.
Refers to December 21, 2012, when the Zapatistas staged their silent march on five cities in Chiapas.
Refers to the #YoSoy132 movement against Enrique Peña Nieto, sparked when 131 university students organized a protest against his visit to their campus. Following the protest, the media asked, "Who will be number 132?", leading to the "I Am 132" movement.
Mexico's elected term.

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

2013-02-04T17:13:00.000-06:00

by Joshua Stephens, Toward Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Call for Solidarity: For Kuy, in Coma Following Mexican Presidential Inauguration Protest

2013-02-01T14:37:00.001-06:00

Kuy in a coma.

In a recent communique, the Zapatista National Liberation Army called upon their supporters to donate money to help with the medical expenses of Juan Francisco "Kuy" Kuykendall, who was injured by a police projectile during the protests against Enrique Peña Nieto's presidential inauguration on December 1, 2012. Kuy is in a coma and has undergone multiple surgeries. He's lost portions of his brain due to the attack and subsequent surgeries, including a recent one where surgeons had to cut out infected brain tissue.

As the communique from the Network Against Repression and For Solidarity states below, supporters within Mexico are asked to deposit donations in a Mexican bank account. If you're not in Mexico, you can do that, or you can donate through my Paypal account. If you want to make a very large donation (more than a few hundred dollars), it's probably cheaper to make an international wire transfer directly to that account from your bank. If you want to make a smaller donation, donating through my Paypal account is almost certainly cheaper. Paypal charges thirty cents USD + 2.9% of the overall donation. Any questions? Email me. I'll email all donors receipts of cash deposits into the Mexican bank account designated for Kuy's medical expenses. Please use this special button to donate:

Here is the complete Call to Action from the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity, whom the EZLN designated to coordinate Zapatista supporters' donations in Mexico.

Call to Action: For Kuy

On December 1, 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto's first day as president, was the day of his administration's first repression against those who protested against his imposition. That repression, that attack which was planned and approved by the outgoing administration of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, executed by Peña Nieto's administration and supported by the outgoing and incoming [mayoral] administration in Mexico City of Marcelo Ebrard and Migual Angel Mancera respectively, still continues. The attack continues in a hospital bed and carries the name of Fancisco Kuykendall, a compañero of the Other Campaign, now known as the Sixth, who was seriously injured in the head by the cowardice of those above who believe they are untouchable.

Almost two months since the attack, Kuy is still hospitalized and fighting for his life, now forgotten by the cameras and reflectors that that December 1st condemned the protests in order to legitimize, voluntarily or involuntarily, the ignorance, banality, and violence of the recently named president. Kuy is still alive thanks to the strength and conviction and camaraderie of those who collectively work with Otra Cultura ["Other Culture"] and other collectives, organizations, groups, and individuals who are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle.

But compañero Kuy continues to resist, thanks to the strength and conviction and the camaraderie of those who collectively work with Otra Cultura and other collectives, organizations, groups, and individuals who are adherents to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle.

Kuy resists and needs the solidarity of all of the honest and simple people on this planet in order to be able to keep being treated and so that he recuperates, so that as a cultural worker he can continue saying "no" to the above that oppresses, plunders, disdains, and exploits us, and to build that other form of expressing life and dignity, that Other Culture.

From the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity, we call for all those honest and supportive people to support compañero Kuy, demanding justice for him and for all of those who were injured on December 1; and that the harassment through the prosecution of those who protested on that day against injustice cease. We asked that you also support the indispensable fundraising efforts for the hospitalization and rehabilitation of the compañero Kuy.

Due to the above, we call for:

Campaign: For Kuy

We call on all of the compañeros in the Network against Repression and For Solidarity, in the Sixth, and good-hearted people to protest, organize, and mobilize all over Planet Earth according to your time, means, and methods, to carry out:

A campaign of solidarity, denouncing the attack our compañero was subjected to, demanding justice for him and for all of those injured on that date, and to demand unconditional freedom for all of those detained in Mexico City and in Guadalajara during the protests against the imposition of Enrique Peña Nieto as head of the federal executive branch.
According to each of your methods, time, means, and spaces, join us with local, national, and international activities on Sunday, February 17, 2013, as part of the Political-Cultural Day of Action for Kuy. In Mexico City we will join the cultural-artistic act in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, beginning at noon.
Ongoing fundraising campaign, to be deposited in the following bank account: 2824024214 BBVA Bancomer, in the name of Eva Palma Pastrana.
In the Mexico Valley, take shifts guarding the hospital where our compañero is located, and take up collections as needed.
Support a political-artistic-cultural act [on a date to be announced] that will denounce the Mexican State and demand justice, as proposed by the compañera Eva [Kuy's partner].

It is important to emphasize that each act should highlight the compañero Juan Francisco Kuykendall's life's work, his organizational work in art and culture, elements of which should be present in our protests and mobilizations. As well as the demand for unconditional freedom for all of our compañeros who were arrested on December 1, 2012, and the repeal of Article 362 of Mexico City's penal code, which permits the incarceration and persecution of activists and any other person who travels on the streets of Mexico City under the pretext of "disturbing the peace," that was promoted and approved during Andrés Manuel López Obrador's administration; the law includes what [Dirty War president] Gustavo Díaz Ordaz called "social dissolution."

For Kuy…

Against plundering and repression:

Soidarity!

Network Against Repression and for Solidarity [Red Contra la Represión y por la Solidaridad]

(RvsR)

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

2013-01-29T22:40:00.000-06:00

Zapatistas love parties almost as much as they love autonomy.

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

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

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

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

Them and Us Part 5: The Sixth by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-01-27T00:13:00.001-06:00

Password: marichiweu

THEM AND US

V.- THE SIXTH

ZAPATISTA NATIONAL LIBERATION ARMY.

MEXICO.

January 2013.

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

From: The Zapatistas from Chiapas, Mexico.

Compañeras, compañeros, and compañeroas:

Compas in the Network Against Repression and for Solidarity:

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

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

-*-

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

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

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

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

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

-*-

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

-*-

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

-*-

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

-*-

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

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

Compas:

We are the Sixth.

It's going to be very difficult.

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

We will fight.

We will resist.

We will struggle.

Maybe we'll die.

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

For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the

Zapatista National Liberation Army

The Sixth-EZLN.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

Chiapas, Mexico, Planet Earth.

January 2013.

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

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

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

Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

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

2013-01-25T01:08:00.000-06:00

THEM AND US

IV.- The Pains From Below

January 2013.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Umberto Eco. The Prague Cemetery.

Where and when did the violence start?

Let's see.

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

Imagine that you are different from everyone else.

Imagine that you are something very other.

Imagine that you have a certain skin or hair color.

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

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

Juan Francisco "Kuy" Kuykendall

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

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

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

Uriel Sandoval

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

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

-*-

You still don't see it?

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

Celedonio Prudencio Monroy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adrián Javier González Villarreal

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

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

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

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

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

Cruz Morales Calderón

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

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

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

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

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

Juvencio Lascurain

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

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

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

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

Matías Valentín Catrileo Quezada

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

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

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

Francisco Sántiz López

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

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

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

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

-*-

Are you still with us?

Now…

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

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

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

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

-*-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-*-

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you imagine it?

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

(to be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

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

Listen and watch the video that accompanies this text:

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

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

Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Notes:

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

Read the rest of "Them and Us:"

Them and Us Part 3: The Overseers by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-01-24T02:21:00.000-06:00

THEM AND US

III.- The Overseers

Somewhere in Mexico…

The man hits the table, furious.

-Annihilate them!

-Sir, with all due respect, we've been trying to do that for 500 years. Each successive empire that has arisen has attempted to do so with all of their era's military might--

-So why are they still there?

-Err…we're still trying to figure that out--the lackey glares reproachfully at the man in a military uniform.

The aforementioned man gets up and, standing at attention, extends his right hand frontward, with his hand out[1], and shouts enthusiastically:

-Heil!… Sorry, I meant to say that I salute you, sir -- After shooting a threatening look that shuts up the snickering from other guests, he continues:

-The problem, sir, is that those heretics don't confront us where we're strong, they turn around and attack us where we're weak. If it were all just a matter of lead and fire, well, those lands, with their forests, water, minerals, people, would have been conquered a long time ago and you would have been able to offer them up as a tribute to the great Ruler, sir. Those cowards, instead of confronting us with just their heroic bare chests, or with bows, arrows, and spears, and go down in history as heroes (beaten, yes, but heroes), they prepare, they organize, they reach agreements, they give us the slip, and they hide when they take off their masks. But we wouldn't be in this situation if you would have listened to me when everything began-- and he glares reproachfully at the guest whose place card says "chupa-cabras version 8.8.1.3."[2]

The aforementioned guest smiles as he says:

-General, with all due respect, we didn't have an atomic bomb. And even if we could have acquired one from our allies (the guest who has the ambassador place card expresses his thanks for the mention), we would have been able to wipe out the aboriginals, but we would have also destroyed the forests and the water; moreover, the work of mining exploration and operations would have been impossible for, say, a couple of centuries-.

Another one of the lackeys speaks up:

-We offered them songs and poems praising their sacrifice, ballads, movies, roundtables, essays, books, plays, statues, their name in golden letters when they died. We told them that if they insisted on resisting and staying alive, we would spread rumors and doubts about why they haven't disappeared, why they haven't died, and we would say they were of our own creation, that we were going to bring forth a smear campaign that would even include the support of some intellectuals, artists, and progressive journalists -- The aforementioned guests make a gesture of approval, although more than one appears displeased by so many "-ists."

The man impatiently interrupts:

-And?

-They responded with this gesture -- (the lackey shows them a hand balled into a fist but with the middle finger raised).

The guests squirm indignantly and clamor:

-Proles! Degenerates! Louts! Plebeians! Hood rats! -

The lackey still has his hand up, facing the man. The man rebukes him:

-I get it! You can put your hand down.

The lackey slowly lowers his hand winks at the rest of the guests. Then he continues:

-The problem, sir, is that these people don't worship death, but rather life. We've tried to eliminate their visible leaders, buy them, seduce them.

-And?

-Not only have we not succeeded, we haven't even realized that the bigger problem is the invisible leaders.

-Ok, let's find them.

-We already found them, sir.

-And?

-They're everyone, sir.

-What do you mean, everyone?

-Yes, everyone. That was one of the messages they sent on the day the world ended. We managed to keep the media from talking about it, but I think that we can say it here without fearing that someone else will find out. They used a code so that we would understand: he who is on the stage is the leader.[3]

-What!? 40,000 leaders?

-Err… sir, excuse me, those are the ones we saw, you'd have to add in the many more that we didn't see.

-Then buy them! I imagine we have enough money - he adds, addressing the guest with the place card that says "non-Automated Teller Machine."

The so-called ATM begins to stammer:

-Well, sir, we'd have to sell off a State asset, but we don't really have anything anymore.

The lackey interrupts:

-Sir, we've tried.

-And?

-They're not for sale.

-Then convince them.

-They don't understand what we say to them. And to tell you the truth, we don't understand what they say, either. They talk about dignity, freedom, justice, democracy…

-Ok, then we'll act like they don't exist. That way they'll die of hunger, curable diseases, a good media blackout, no one will even notice until it's too late. That's it, let's kill them with oblivion.

The guest who bears a striking resemblance to a chupa-cabras makes a sign of approval. The man thanks him for the gesture.

-But sir, there's a problem.

-Which?

-Even if we ignore them, they insist on continuing to exist. Without our charity, sorry, what I meant is without our help, they built schools, they made the land productive, they built clinics and hospitals, they improved their homes and their diets, they lowered crime rates, they did away with alcoholism. And not only did they prohibit the production, distribution, and consumption of narcotics, they raised their life expectancy and theirs is almost equal to that of big cities.

-Oh, so it's still higher in the cities -- content, the man smiles.

-No, sir, when I said "almost" I meant that theirs is higher. The life expectancy in the cities went down thanks to your predecessor's strategy, sir.

Everyone turns to look with mockery and reproach at the man with the blue tie.

-You're saying that those rebels live better than those who sell out to us?

-Absolutely, sir. But you don't have to worry about that, we've initiated an ad hoc media campaign to put a lid on it.

-And?

-The problem is that neither they nor our people watch television, or read our media, or have Twitter, or Facebook, or even a cell phone signal. They know that they're better off and our people know they're worse off.

The guest with the place card that says "modern left" rises to her feet:

-Sir, if you'll allow me. With the new program called Solid…sorry, I meant to say "National Crusade"…[4]

The lackey impatiently interrupts:

-Enough, Chayo[4], don't start with another one of your speeches for the media. All of us agree that the main enemy is those damn indians and not the other unmentionable. We have that one good and infiltrated and completely fenced in by people who belong to this man here.

The man with the "chupa cabras" place card nods with satisfaction and gratefully accepts the pats on the back that nearby guests give him.

The lackey continues:

-But you and I and everyone else who is here knows that all of this about social programs is a lie, that it doesn't matter how much money is invested, at the end of the bottleneck there's nothing. Because everyone takes their cut. After the señor, with all due respect, you take a big chunk, everyone else here does, too, and then the governors, the heads of the military zones, the local legislatures, the mayors, the commissioners, the leaders, those in charge, the cashiers, so little or nothing is left over for those below.

The man intervenes:

-Well we have to do something fast, because if we don't, the Ruler will look for other overseers and you are all well aware, ladies and gentlemen, of what that means: unemployment, ridicule, and maybe even jail or exile.

The person marked "chupa cabras" shudders and makes an affirmative gesture.

-And it is urgent, because if those indians with the cracked feet… (the man's daughter makes an expression of disgust, the woman sits there, suddenly indisposed, and turns so green that, well, forget about the Green Lantern). The woman leaves, saying something about a pregnancy.[6]

The man goes on:

-If those fucking indians unite, we'll have serious problems because…

-Ahem, ahem, sir -- the lackey interrupts.

-Yes?

-I'm afraid there's a bigger problem, that is, worse, sir-.

-Bigger? Worse? What could be worse than an indian insurrection?

-Well, if they reached an agreement with the others, sir-.

-The Others? Who are they?

-Hmm… let me see… ok, well, peasants, workers, the unemployed, youth, students, teachers, employees, women, men, the elderly, professionals, fags and dykes, punks, Rastafarians, skaters, rappers, hip-hop artists, rockers, metal heads, chauffeurs, tenant farmers, NGOs, street vendors, crews, races, hood rats, plebes…-

-Enough! I get it… I think.

The lackeys look at each other with a knowing smile.

-Where are the leaders we bought? Where are the ones we've convinced that the solution to everything is to be like us?

-They're believing them less and less, sir. They have less and less control over their people.

-Look for someone to buy! Offer them money, trips, television programs, candidacies, seats in congress, governments! But above all money, a lot of money!

-We're doing that, sir, but… -- the lackey looks doubtful.

-And? -- the man prods him on.

-We find more and more…-

-Magnificent! More money is needed then?

-Sir, what I mean is that we find more and more who won't sell out.

-Terror, then?

-Sir, there's more and more who aren't afraid of us, or if they are, they have it under control.

-Deception?

-Sir, more and more think for themselves.

-We have to finish off all of them, then!

-Sir, if we make everyone disappear, we would disappear, too. Who would sow the land, who would run the machines, who would work in the corporate media, who would serve us, who would fight in our wars, who would praise us?

-Then we have to convince them that we are as important as they are.

-Sir, not only are more and more people realizing that we're not necessary, it appears that the Ruler is doubting our usefulness, and by "our" I mean all of us.

The guests sitting at the man's table shift uncomfortable in their seats.

-Well then?

-Sir, while we look for another solution, because the "Pact"[7] didn't work at all, and seeing that we have to avoid the embarrassment of once again hiding out in a bathroom[8], we've acquired something better: a "panic room!"[9]

The guests stand up and applaud. The all crowd around the machine. The man gets in and takes the controls.

The lackey nervously warns him:

-Sir, just be careful you don't hit the "eject" button.

-This one?

-Nooooooooooo!

The make-up artists and puppeteers run to provide first aid.

The lackey addresses one of the cameramen who recorded everything:

-You have to erase that part… And tell the Ruler to get a replacement doll ready. This one always needs resetting.

The guests straighten their ties and skirts, comb their hair, cough, trying to draw attention. The the cameras' clicks and flashes overshadow everything…

(to be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

Sup Marcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

Information from Report #69 of the Autonomous Intelligence Service (SIA in its Spanish abbreviation) regarding what was heard and seen in an ultra-arch-extremely-hyper secret meeting which took place in Mexico City, in the backyard of the United States, latitude 19° 24´ N, longitude 99° 9´ W. Date: a few hours ago. Classification: eyes only. Recommendation: do not make this document public because they'll burn us alive. Note: send more pozol because Elías[10] drank it all when someone shouted: "Eat while there's lots of food!" and he's skanking to the Nana Pancha cover of the Tijuana No song "Transgresores de la Ley" [Law Breakers]. Yes, the song is cool, but it's tough to go in the mosh pit because Elías is wearing steel-toed boots.

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

Listen and watch the video the accompanies this text:

"Luna Negra" [Black Moon]. Lyrics by Arcadio Hidalgo. Scored and played by Los Cojolites. The other son jarocho. ¡A zapatearle en el fandango raza![11]

"En esta tierra que me vio nacer" [On this land where I was born] with MC LOKOTER. Greetings to the Other Zumpango [town in Mexico State]. Production and photography: Joana López. Directed and edited by: Ricardo Santillán. Production: BLASJOY DESIGNER. Year 2012.
Note: An MC is something like a DJ with noble feelings and cool words, but with a hip-hop rhythm. Rap!

"Transgresores de la ley" by Tijuana No, covered by Nana Pancha on their album "Flores para los muertos" [Flowers for the dead]. Every time Tijuana No played this song, they dedicated it to the EZLN, even when the Zaps weren't fashionable. Greetings and a big hug to those who never forgot us. Skaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Everybody jump!

Translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker.

Translator's Notes:
The "Ruler" is the United States government, "the man" (el señor) is current president Enrique Peña Nieto, "chupacabras" is former president Carlos Salinas, and the "man with the blue tie" is former president Felipe Calderón.

The Mexican military salute looks a lot like the Nazi German military salute.
The chupacabras is a mythical Mexican vampire beast that sucks the blood out of goats. It was allegedly invented by Carlos Salinas to distract people's attention from the fact that he was running the country into the ground.
Referring to the December 21, 2012, mobilization in which 40,000 Zapatistas took to the streets in silence. The Zapatista communique released that day stated: "Did you listen? It is the sound of their world crumbling. It is the sound of our world resurging."
"Solidaridad" (Solidarity) was a public works program initiated by Carlos Salinas, who is Enrique Peña Nieto's godfather and widely considered to be the latter's puppet master. So it was no surprise when Peña Nieto recently announced his new campaign, the National Crusade Against Hunger and Poverty, to which the Zapatistas responded with the middle finger.
Chayo is a nickname for a woman named Rosario, in this case referring to Rosario Robles, the head of Sedesol, Mexico's Social Development Agency, which is responsible for implementing the National Crusade. Here she's referred to as the "modern left" because she defected from the center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) to join the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which currently rules Mexico.
Mexican indigenous people who live in rural areas often have cracked feet because they walk barefoot. During the presidential campaign, Enrique Peña Nieto's daughter retweeted a tweet from her boyfriend referring to her father's critics as "a bunch of idiots" and "proles."
When Enrique Peña Nieto took office, he announced a "Pact for Mexico" that would supposedly solve the country's problems. Not many people were particularly impressed.
During the presidential campaign, Peña Nieto was confronted by student protesters at the private Ibero-American University…so he hid in a bathroom. The Ibero protest sparked the massive #YoSoy132 student movement.
Panic rooms are being constructed in some Mexican courthouses to protect judges.
Comandante Elías Contreras is the EZLN's head of intelligence. Pozol is a corn drink popular in Chiapas and Tabasco, the two states with confirmed Zapatista presence.
Son jarocho is a folksy musical genre from Veracruz. Zapatear is how one dances to son jarocho; it involves stomping on a wooden platform in hard-soled shoes to make noise. Fandango is a son jarocho dance party.

This is Part 3 of a series of communiques from Subcomandante Marcos. The English translation of Part 1: The (Lack of) Reason from Above and Part 2: The Machine in Almost Two Pages are also available.

Them and Us Part 2: The Machine in Almost Two Pages by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-01-22T23:50:00.000-06:00

THEM AND US

II.- The Machine in almost two pages.

January 2013.

The salesman speaks:

It's amazing, very "cool" so you understand me. It's called "neoliberal globalization version 6.6.6," but we prefer to call it "the savage" or "the beast." Yes, an aggressive nickname, one with initiative, very grrr. Yes, I learned that in a self-help course called "How to sell a nightmare"… but let's get back to the machine. Its operation is very simple. It is self-sufficient (or "sustainable," as is sometimes said). It produces, yes, exorbitant profits… What? Invest part of those profits to alleviate hunger, unemployment, lack of education? But those shortages are exactly what makes this baby run! What do you think of that? A machine that produces the fuel it needs to run: misery and unemployment.

Of course, it also produces goods, but not just that. Look: let's say that something completely useless is produced, something that no one needs, something without a market. Well, this gem doesn't just produce useless stuff, it also creates a market where that useless stuff is turned into a basic necessity.

The crises? Of course. Just press this button right here… no, not that one, that's the "eject" button… the other one… yes. Ok, push that button and ta-da! There you have the crisis you need, everything is right there, with your millions of unemployed, your water cannons, your financial speculation, your droughts, your famine, your deforestation, your wars, your religious apocalypses, your supreme saviors, your jails and cemeteries (for those who don't follow the supreme saviors), your tax havens, your aid projects with theme songs and choreography included… of course, a little bit of charity always looks good.

But that's not all, let me show you this demo. When you put it in "destruction/depopulation-reconstruction/restructuring" mode it performs miracles. Look at this example: do you see those forests? No, don't worry about those indigenous people…yes, they're Mapuches, but they could be Yaquis, Mayos, Nahuas, Purépechas, Mayans, Guaranís, Aymarás, Quechúas. Ok, press the "play" button and watch how the forests disappear (and the indigenous people, but no one cares about them), now watch how everything becomes a wasteland, wait… here come the machinery and voila! There you have your golf course that you've always dreamed of, with its exclusive parking and the works. Ah, it's wonderful, don't you think?

It also comes with the latest software. You can click here where it says "filter" and your TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube will only show psalms and praise for you and yours. Yes, it eliminates any sort of commentary, writing, image, noise, all the bad vibes that every now and then those anonymous, dirty, ugly, bad, rude proles try to slip in.

It has a lever on the floor (even though you can put it on autopilot with just one click); a heliport; no plane ticket, because sometimes there's no place to run to, but it does include a spot on the next departing space shuttle; it also has a super-hyper-mega exclusive mall; a golf course; a minibar; a yacht club; a framed diploma from Harvard; a summer house; an iceskating rink… yes, I know, what would we do without the modern Left and its quick wit? Ah, and with this gem you can be in "real time" simultaneously in any part of the world, it's as if you had your own exclusive global ATM.

Hmm… yes, it includes a papal bull to ensure you a V.I.P. spot in heaven. Yes, I know, but we're already working on immortally. Meanwhile, we can install an accessory (at an additional cost, of course, but I'm sure this isn't a problem for someone like you): a panic room! Yes, you've seen how those vandals think they have the right to demand what's theirs with that "the land belongs to those who work it." Oh, but you have nothing to worry about. That's why we have rulers, political parties, new religions, reality shows. But of course, that's an assumption*, because if they fail at some point? Of course, when it comes to security, no expense should be spared. Of course, let me write that down: "Include Panic Room."

It also includes a study for TV, one for radio, and an editor's desk. No, don't get me wrong. They're not for watching TV or listening to the radio or reading newspapers and magazines, that's for jerks. They're for producing information and entertainment for the people who run the machine. Isn't that neat?

What? Oh… ok… yes… I'm afraid that problem hasn't been solved by our specialists. Yes, if the raw material, I mean, if the plebeian masses revolt nothing can be done. Yes, the "panic room" could be useless in that situation. But we shouldn't be pessimistic, just keep in mind that that day… or night… is very far off. Yes, I also learned all that "new age" optimism from a self-help course. Huh? What? I'm fired?

(to be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

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

Listen and watch the video that accompanies this text:

Fuck Tha Posse -- El Fin de los Días [The End of Days] (Dr. Loncho, Oscar A Secas and Hazhe) -- 20 Minutos Mixtape Vol. 1

_____________________

Regarding the Mapuche People's struggle.

*Translator's Note: Instead of using the Spanish word for "assumption" (supuesto), Marcos (speaking as the salesman) uses supositorio, the Spanish word for "suppository." He's making fun of the salesman with a play on words that can be best explained with the classic English saying: "When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me."

Translation from the original Spanish: Kristin Bricker. Part 1 of this essay is available in English here.

Them and Us, Part 1: The (Lack of) Reason from Above by Subcomandante Marcos

2013-01-21T00:27:00.001-06:00

THEM AND US

I.- The (lack of) reason from above.

January 2013

Those from above say:

"We're the ones who make the rules. We're more powerful, although there are fewer of us. We don't care what you say-hear-think-do, as long as you are mute, deaf, immobile.

"We can impose halfway intelligent people in the government (although they're already getting to be difficult to find within the political class), but we chose one who can't even pretend to know what he's talking about.[1]

"Why? Because we can.

"We could use the police and military apparatus to persecute and jail real criminals, but those criminals are a vital part of us. Instead, we choose to persecute you, beat you, detain you, torture you, jail you, kill you.

"Why? Because we can.

"Guilty or innocent? Who cares if you are one or the other? Justice is just another whore in our little black book, and believe us, it's not the most expensive one.

"And even if you follow the rules that we impose to the letter, even if you don't do anything, even though you might be innocent, we will squash you.

"And if you insist on asking why we do it, we'll respond: because we can.

"That is having Power. A lot is said about money, riches, and those things. But believe us when we say that what excites us is that feeling of being able to make decisions about anyone's life, liberty, and assets. No, power is not money, it's what you can have with it. Power is not just exercising it with impunity, it is also and above all, to do it irrationally. Because having Power is to do and undo without having any other reason than the possession of Power.

"And it doesn't matter who stands out in front, hiding us. Right and left are only references so that the chauffeur can park the car. The machinery runs itself. We don't even have to order them to punish the insolence of defying us. Large, medium, and small governments all over the political spectrum, as well as intellectuals, artists, journalists, politicians, and religious leaders fight over the privilege to please us.

"So fuck you, screw you, rot in hell, die, get discouraged, give up.

"To the rest of the world you don't exist, you are no one.

"Yes, we've sowed hate, cynicism, rancor, desperation, theoretical and practical don't-give-a-fuck, conformity with the 'lesser evil,' fear turned into resignation.

"And, nonetheless, we fear that which has transformed itself into organized rebellious rage, without a price tag.

"Because we control, manage, ration, and feed the chaos that we impose. Our 'law enforcement' forces impose our chaos.

"But the chaos[2] that comes from below…

"Ah, that… we don't even understand what they say, who they are, how much they cost.

"And they're so rude that they don't beg, await, request, plead--instead, they exercise their freedom. Have you ever seen such obscenity!

"That is the real danger. People who look on the other side, who leave the mold, or break it, or ignore it.

"You know what's really worked for us? That myth about unity at all cost. To only understand oneself with a boss, leader, ruler, or whatever they call themselves. Controlling, managing, containing, buying one is much easier than many. Yes, and cheaper. That and individual rebelliousness. It's so wonderfully useless.

"Rather, what's really dangerous in a true chaos is when every one becomes a collective, group, crew, raza, organization, and they learn to say 'no' and 'yes,' and they reach agreements amongst themselves. Because the 'no' is directed towards those of us who give the orders. And the 'yes,'… geez… that really is a disaster. Imagine if everyone built their own destinies, and they decided who to be and what to do. It would be like pointing out that we're expendable, excessive, that we get in the way, that we're not necessary, that we should be in jail, that we should disappear.

Art: Banksy

"Yes, a nightmare. Yes, of course, for us. Can you imagine how bad that world would be? Full of indians, blacks, browns, yellows, reds, dreadlocks, tattoos, piercings, studs, punks, goths, cholos, skaters, that 'A' flag without a nation to buy it, youth, women, whores, children, the elderly, zoot suiters, drivers, peasants, workers, tacky people, proles, poor people, anonymous people… others. Without a privileged space for us, the 'beautiful people'[3]… or, so you understand us, the 'good people'… because we can tell by the way you talk that you didn't study at Harvard.

"Yes, that day would be night for us… Yes, everything would be ruined. What would we do?

"Hmm… we hadn't thought about that. We think, we plan, and we execute what to do so that it doesn't happen, but… no, that hadn't occurred to us.

"Well, in any case, well….hmm… I don't know… perhaps we would look for who to blame, and then, well, we'd look for, I don't know, a Plan B. Of course by then it would be useless. I think that then we would remember what that damn red Jew said…no, not Marx… Einstein, Albert Einstein. I think it was him who said: 'Theory is when you know everything and nothing works. Practice is when everything works and no one knows why. In this case we have combined theory and practice: nothing works… and no one knows why.'

"No, you're right, we wouldn't even be able to smile. A sense of humor has always been an non-expropriable patrimony. Isn't that a shame?

"Yes, without a doubt, these are times of crisis.

"Hey, aren't you going to take pictures? I mean, so we can fix our hair and put on something a little more presentable. Nah, we already tried that in 'Hola'[4]… oh, but what are we saying, it's obvious that you haven't gotten past [the comic book] 'El Libro Vaquero.'

"Oh, we can't wait to tell our friends that someone so… so… so… other came to interview us. They're going to love it. And, well, it's going to make us seem so cosmopolitan…

"No, of course we're not afraid of you. Regarding that prophecy… bah, it's superstition… so… so… native… yes, so Region 4 [5]… hahahaha…what a good joke, let's write that down for when we see the kids…

"What?… It isn't a prophecy?…

"Oh, it's a promise…"

(…) (the tee-tu-ta-ta-tatatata sound, from the smartphone)

"Hello, police? Yes, I'd like to report that someone came to see us. Yes, we think he was a journalist or something. He looked so… so… so other, yes. No, no, he didn't do anything to us. No, he didn't take anything. It's just that, as we were leaving to go to the club to see our friends, and we see that someone has painted something on the entrance to the garden. No, the guards didn't see who it was. Of course not! Ghosts don't exist. Well, it's painted with a lot of colors… No, we didn't see any paint cans nearby… Well, as we were saying, it is painted with a lot of colors, so colorful, very tacky, very other, not anything like the galleries where… what? No, we don't want you to send a squad car. Yes, we know. But we're calling to see if you can investigate what the painting means. We don't know if it's a code, or one of those strange tongues that the proles speak. Yes, it's just one word, but we don't know why it makes us shudder. It says:

"MARICHIWEU!'"[6]

(to be continued…)

From any corner of any world.

SupMarcos
Planet Earth
January 2013

___________________

Listen to and watch the videos that accompany this text:

a.- Pacheco

"Pachuco," by La Maldita Vecindad y los Hijos del 5to Patio. Video is from the perspective of "from below," that is, in the middle of the mosh pit. The moral of the story: don't record while you're on the trampoline. And what the heck, Maldita? Don't be so idem and get it together. Or what, you're just going to leave the raza to the mercy of the Justin Beibers of the world? Fine, greetings from Solin, because you guys really did understand that the communities are pure Kalimán.[7]

_____________________

b.-"More for your money."

"More for your money." Written and directed by Yordi Capó. Guadalajara, Mexico, August 2003.

_______________________

c.- "Of rats and cats."

Cartoons based on the words of Thomas C. Douglas (1904-1986).

Translator's notes:

Referring to President Enrique Peña Nieto, who is turning out to be at least as inarticulate and factually challenged as George W. Bush.
Marcos wrote "chaos" with the letter "k" in Spanish: "kaos." Like anglophone anarcho-punks and other rebellious youth, Mexico's young rebels often replace the "c"s in certain works with "k"s in the written language.
"The beautiful people" is written in English in the original. Bourgeois Mexicans like to sprinkle English words and phrases into their vocabulary.
Hola! is a Mexican magazine for women. It featured exclusive photos and interviews regarding current president Enrique Peña Nieto's fairytale wedding to soap opera star Angelica Rivera.
Region 4 is the DVD region code for Mexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and much of Oceania. Mexico also uses Region 1, the region code for the US and Canada.
A Mapuche phrase that means "we will win one hundred times over."
"Pachuco" means "zoot suiter" in Mexico. Marcos uses a lot of Mexico City slang here and is making reference to another Maldita Vecindad song called "Solín," which is about a poor man who reads about Mexican comic book hero Kalimán and decides to change his name and make a living as a carnival psychic. Maldita Vecindad is a classic Mexican ska/punk band that has supported many Left causes since the band's inception in the 1980s. The band is still popular and active, but they haven't put out an album in years--much to Marcos' chagrin, apparently.

Translation from the original Spanish: Kristin Brickier

Only the People Defend the People: Guerrero Human Rights Center Weighs in on Uprising

2013-01-15T18:22:00.000-06:00

by the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of la Montaña
translated by Kristin Brickier

Photo: Blog del Narco

On Saturday, January 5, 2013, at about 11pm, citizen Eusebio Alvarado García, commissioner of Rancho Nuevo, Tecoanapa municipality, was taken by force from his home by people who belong to the criminal groups that have overrun the Ayutla region. Eusebio had recently arrived at his home with the news that he had been elected a subcommander of the Community Police. That afternoon there was a regional assembly of the authorities of El Portrero, which is also in Tecoanapa, where there were also representatives from other municipalities such as Cuautepec, San Marcos, Cruz Grande, and Ayutla. Previously, the communities in this corridor of the Costa Chica met to plan joint actions against organized crime, which for years has dominated as the scourge of the indigenous and peasant communities because of the authorities' indifference at all three levels of government.

According to residents, the situation became unbearable because of the cruel and abusive manner in which these groups acted. That's why, in the assembly on Saturday they felt the pressing need to construct a basic structure that would confront this de facto power. Various groups of police were formed, each with its own commander, who were given the order to practice armed self defense when faced with any circumstance that would put the fiscal safety, freedom, or life of their compañeros and compañeras in the struggle at risk.

The unease and outrage had risen due to the kidnapping of a commander from Ahuacachahue in the Ayutla de los Libres municipality. The people managed to identify which persons had carried out this criminal act. Days afterwards, due to a teachers union conflict that affected the entire Me'phaa indigenous community of Plan de Gatica, the municipal commissioner was the victim of a kidnapping. The community's immediate reaction led to the compañero's release in Acapulco. Likewise, as a result of their investigation, the community knew who the intellectual and material architects of the crime were. The worst was when a citizen from that same town was murdered on December 26, 2012, due to the same teachers union conflict.

These and many other criminal acts that have multiplied so much in the Me'phaa and Na Savi indigenous communities of Ayutla, as well as the extortions, kidnappings, narco-taxes, and murders that the businessmen and businesswomen, students, teachers, mobile vendors, some cab drivers, fathers and mothers suffer daily in the Ayutla, Tecoanapa, Cruz Grande, San Marcos, and Cuautepec municipalities resonated with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (UPOEG), which, due to its close work with the people in this zone, had the good sense, intelligence, ability, and bravery to make the largely poor and defenseless populace's suffering its own. Faced with the urgency that the insecurity situation would further affect the indigenous and mestiza population's heritage, security, and lives, in its latest assemblies the UPOEG put aside the pressing issues on its agenda (such as the fight against high electric bills and the fight for infrastructure projects) in order to put the climate of violence and insecurity that the de facto criminal powers at the center of its agenda.

With skilled and painstaking citizen intelligence, they have a clear, in-depth analysis into crime's modus operandi: its centers of operation, allies, contacts, informants, accomplices, safe houses, etc. Armed with this information, the communities made the decision to adopt self-defense in order to guarantee a true citizens' security, running the risks that using weapons (some of them in really bad shape) to confront those who were harming the population with weapons would entail. They staked out the places were they generally operate, installed checkpoints, searched vehicles, detained those whom they managed to identify as members of those groups, seized weapons, and had to use their meager weapons against someone who resisted being searched and who tried to use his pistol against those who were leading the operation.

In a matter of hours, those responsible for searching for the commissioner located him. Instead of being frightened by this intimidating act, they found the straw that broke the camel's back and set off an armed self-defense movement that forced them to take the populace's security into their own hands. On Sunday, Three Kings Day, about 800 police arrived in Ayutla and immediately stationed themselves in strategic points in order to counteract any reaction from criminal groups. They took control in order to institute order and detain those who were identified by the populace as perpetrators of crimes.

Without thinking twice, the 800 police who arrived armed with rudimentary weapons and modest clothing (which tells us something about their precarious economic situation) demonstrated to the authorities and society as a whole that determined and autonomously organized people are capable of instituting order and giving working people back their security. This armed self-defense movement has achieved a power that is unprecedented in the state and in the country, because it is a tangible example of what citizens really have to do in order to recover the security we lost.

In order for the authorities to once again earn the people's trust, they have the obligation to correct their course, rectify their policies, and recognize that they have failed the citizenry because they are complicit in the tragedy that is bleeding us to death as a state. The populace notices that various authorities work for the other side, because they don't act with conviction against the crime that festers in the government's own structures. The vices that accompany corruption live on and are the gears that move a justice and security system that has turned into the citizens' enemy because it is in bed with organized crime. This union leads to the humiliation, pillage, and devastation of a people besieged and subjugated by organized crime.

For their part, the politicians sit back and don't approach--not even by accident--the people from these communities that suffer the consequences of criminal acts. They don't make their people's struggle their own. Nor are they willing to respect and recognize indigenous people's efforts and contributions, which are based on internationally recognized collective rights which the governments have scorned. Instead, the authorities in their crystal palaces become judges and and issue guilty verdicts, but not against those who have disrupted the populace's lives, but rather against the very police who defend the people and who are doing for free the work of those who continue to enjoy a comfortable life with outrageous salaries.

Now the state government is repeating what it has already done to the residents of Huamuxtitlán and Olinalá; it is asking those who have practiced self defense that they put down their weapons, that they give up their ambitions to establish order and stop detaining those who have committed crimes. It asks, as it did 18 years ago with the nascent Community Police, that they turn their detainees over to the Public Prosecutor so that it can begin its investigations. It is also trying to persuade them to go back to their communities and it promises that the saviors of the fatherland will come with Operation Safe Guerrero. It intimidates them with the legalspeak that they are committing crimes and that they should have criminal investigations opened against them.

This governmental magnanimity is the another face of perversity and complicity, because it does not seek to get to the root of the citizens' security problems, nor does it have any intention of completely destroying the network of complicity and hidden interests that are entrenched in government institutions. The purging and professionalization of the police departments and the state Attorney General's Office that society has demanded since the very beginning is a governmental issue and remains untouched. All of the ministerial investigations have been distorted because they have turned into shams and quackery.

This past Sunday the communities once again exercised their right to consultation in order to make better decisions that will result in benefits for the citizens. Their withdrawal is tactical, because they know that the Safe Guerrero program is not a panacea. On the contrary, it could mean more risk, because no civil authority will guarantee that it will respect their human rights and that it won't impose martial law, which would generate even more fear, and would also inhibit, demobilize, and criminalize the population that organizes itself and defends its right to live safely.

This lesson of utmost importance is registered in the communities' memories. Their most precious treasure is that they have ascertained their social and political potential. They have realized that their power is unshakeable and their strength is unwavering. These intangible goods are already part of their heritage and are their best community capital. For that same reason, they are no longer willing to blindly obey nor naively believe in the authorities. Their subjugation is another chapter in a dreadful story where governments mock and trample the people's dignity. Trust can no longer be uncritically placed in authorities that have not demonstrated their commitment nor honored their word. That's why they will remain vigilant and on the front lines in order to monitor those who are now in charge of security. The communities will know when they have to decide to once again take the responsibility to provide security and guarantee justice into their own hands and apply their own cosmogenic systems based on internationally recognized indigenous peoples' rights.

Guerrero Community Police Denounce Attempts to Use Citizen Uprising to Divide and Militarize Their Region

2013-01-15T01:08:00.000-06:00

Translator's Note: On January 6, residents of several indigenous towns in the war-torn state of Guerrero took up arms to defend themselves against organized crime. What follows is the official communique from the Regional Coordinating Body of Community Police (CRAC) regarding the uprising and the government's and its collaborators' plans to take advantage of it in order to further militarize CRAC-affiliated communities and disrupt their autonomous process.

Regarding the events that have been occurring since last week in the region of Ayutla de los Libres and Tecoanapa, we want to state the following: As everyone knows, residents of various communities in those municipalities appeared armed and masked, establishing search operations on the roads into Ayutla de los Libres, presenting themselves since day one as community police. For that reason, we stated to the press on that same day, January 7, 2013, that that movement is not led by the CRAC - COMMUNITY POLICE and we stated that we had information that those who were behind the movement were leaders of the UPOEG (Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero), despite the fact that during the first few days, they said that it was CRAC who was leading the uprising; nonetheless, during the week this issue was made even more clear, to the point where it was the leaders of that organization who have met on over three occasions with the State Governor in order to define the direction they should give to said movement. That makes it necessary for us to highlight the deceiving position and bad faith that the UPOEG leaders have maintained with the media since the beginning of the uprising, considering that they had the full knowledge that they themselves were the instigators of that uprising, [yet] they have insisted in involving us in a movement that is not typical of our way of doing things.

Likewise, we [wish to] highlight the behavior of the Governor and his officials. He insisted on trying to making us part of this uprising, always referring to the people who are involved in it as Community Police, when we have publicly disavowed any participation in those actions. We demand that the State Government respect our community institution, and that when it refers to the Community Police it makes sure that it is referring to our system.

We are concerned that he is taking advantage of the populace's legitimate feelings about the growing insecurity and violence, manipulating it and involving it in actions that require better planning, but in any case are aimed at strengthening the protagonist ambitions of some UPOEG leaders. We express our respect to the compañeros from the grassroots communities who, without having better information, have involved themselves in said uprising with the goal of providing security for their own people, but we call for common sense and respect for the people.

We want to specify some practices that have been observed in the uprising and that clearly demonstrate that it is not the CRAC Community Police that leads it:

At no point in time since 1995 when our community security [organization] was formed have our officers covered their faces with hoods or balaclavas. Our identification has always been the uniform of a green shirt and black pants, we have credentials issued by the community authorities, and because we are named by our assemblies, all of our people know us, which is why we don't have any need to cover our faces. Our community police will always show their faces. We respectfully request that participants in this uprising stop using our uniform and/or shields during their operations.
We are not at war nor in confrontation with drug trafficking. Our mission is to protect our communities. We cannot carry out operations in localities that are not incorporated into our community system. That is why we have never at any point proposed pursuing crime wherever it might be. We only carry out the detention of people when there is a prior complaint from an offended person, or if someone is found committing offense or error.
In the 17 years that the Community Police has existed, no detainee or accused person has ever been executed or disappeared by the community system. People who are detained can be visited by their families, who are always informed of their proceedings.
Our System of Security and Justice has never, at any moment since its birth, established in any area a "curfew," nor has it ordered or even suggested the suspension of classes in the education system. In the community territory, people can freely transit at whatever hour without fear, because it is the our police's work to guarantee their security and not the other way around.
Our community institution has always proposed a respectful relationship with the government at its different levels, but we have never accepted nor will we accept that it tells us what to do or make conditions. We will not be subordinated. Our only leadership is the people. We do not request coordination with other police agencies, the Army, or the Navy.

With all that has been stated above, it is plainly obvious that which our community institution denounced during the last assembly that occurred in the La Concordia community last December 22: the ambitions of the UPOEG leadership to make themselves the main leaders in the CRAC in order to direct our community institution's work towards the State Government's interests. Today this is completely clear despite its leadership's attempts to hide its true interests. We clearly see that the goal is to destabilize the whole region in which the CRAC-Community Police operates, to give the government pretexts to install state and federal police barracks and Army or Navy barracks (which is exactly what occurred in Olinalá), with the goal of militarizing our regions, legalizing paramilitary practices, and with all of that block the true people's organizations' organizational growth and work. We see the the instances of the state are moving forward with its strategy of putting its seal of approval on the large projects of plundering and looting our resources, such as the mining concessions and biosphere reserves, generating instability in the populace, finding accomplices, and militarizing the regions that could organize themselves to protest.

We publicly denounce that the UPOEG is interfering in the CRAC's internal affairs. Its leader, Bruno Placido Valerio, has told various media outlets about a supposed meeting with the CRAC last December 30, during which a second meeting was supposedly agreed to that would take place on January 19 in the Petrerillo Rincón community in the Malinaltepec municipality, in which "the CRAC's vision would be rectified." We report that no CRAC representative convoked, nor was invited to that meeting on December 30, and for that reason no agreement that could have been reached in that meeting is valid under our community system. Therefore, the supposed meeting called for on January 19 in Potrerillo del Rincón is not being convened by the CRAC.

We denounce the presence of the UPOEG's promotors in communities who are incorporated into the community system who are inciting the populace to join the uprising, and we call on the municipal commissioners and the community police to not let themselves get caught off guard, because if there were some sort of instruction or order to implement a security operation, they would be notified through our structures, which is the Executive Committee of the Community Police or the Regional Coordinators. To the communities who are interested in joining the CRAC, we invite you to go to one of our houses of justice in order to learn about our incorporation procedures, as well as the principles of our community system.

To all of our towns and communities, to the brotherly organizations, to the collectives, collaborators, academics, intellectuals, and progressives, we call upon you to be attentive regarding this new assault that is being organized against our community institution by the dark nucleus of power, and that, unfortunately, can now count on the participation of people who were at some point an important part of our project. Nonetheless, we are confident in our people's wisdom to push forward in the face of this new challenge that we now face.

Respectfully, only the people support and defend the people! "Respect for our rights will be justice."

Regional Coordinators
Claudio Carrasco Hernández, José Mendoza Vázquez, Moisés Figueroa Estrada, Arturo Rojas Román, Asunción Ponce Ramos, Emilio Gálvez Flores, Felícitas Martínez Solano, Jelasio Barrera Quintero, Máximo Tranquilino Santiago, Pablo Guzmán Hernández, Carlos Morales Chávez, Rey Pastrana Peralta, Epifanio Venancio Hilario, Margarito Ramírez Micaela, Bernardino García Francisco, and Ernesto Morales Castro

Translation from the original Spanish: Kristin Brickier

Citizen Uprising Against Organized Crime in Guerrero

2013-01-13T15:17:00.000-06:00

Introduction and translations by Kristin Bricker

LAST UPDATE: JANUARY 15

On January 6, residents of several indigenous towns in the war-torn state of Guerrero followed the example of Cherán in Michoacan and took up arms to defend themselves against organized crime.

The following is meant to be a primer on the uprising and provide the background needed to understand the context.

Guerrero's indigenous were the hardest hit by Mexico's Dirty War in the 1960s and 1970s. Guerrero is the only state to be under continuous military occupation since the Dirty War. The effects of this military occupation are painfully obvious: the rape and torture of indigenous women at the hands of soldiers, the murder of human rights defenders, and the murder and torture of students protesting for the right to study. It was, then, to be expected that when former president Felipe Calderón declared war on drugs, Guerrero's Dirty War would dovetail into the Drug War with disastrous consequences.

Guerrero has a rich history of armed, autonomous, and social movements. It was where one of Mexico's most beloved guerrilla leaders, Lucio Cabañas, organized and fought until the military murdered him in 1974. Guerrero, like Oaxaca, has a strong democratic teachers union, one of the most powerful social-political organizations in the state. It went so far as to go on strike against organized crime in 2011, something few workers have been valiant enough to do when threatened with extortion. Guerrero is also home to the autonomist Community Police, a citizens crime-fighting initiative based on indigenous governance that pre-dates the drug war and ardently supports the Zapatistas.

~~The Community Police appear to be somewhat involved in this new uprising, although they don't lead it.~~ The Community Police have stated that they are not involved in the uprising in Ayutla. As their legal advisor explains in the second article below, they are wary that the Guerrero state government is attempting to co-opt the young movement, much as it does with indigenous groups in Chiapas in order to prevent them from allying themselves with the Zapatistas. The Community Police argue that the government wants to use this uprising and the well-intented peasants who are participating in it in order to militarize, paramilitarize, and infiltrate communities who belong to the Community Police. The Community Police's full statement on the uprising is available here.

Fed Up with Narcos, Townspeople Take Up Arms in Guerrero

by Ezequiel Flores Contrera, Proceso

January 9, 2013

Photo: Ezequiel Flores

Chilpancingo, Guerrero (apro). Five days ago, inhabitants of Ayutla de los Libres and members of the Community Police took over public security in this municipality located in the Costa Chica region with the goal of expelling organized crime groups that have devastated the region.

This incident once again demonstrates the lack of authority and the government's indifference towards the levels of impunity and violence that persist in the area.

Citizens are fed up with the incessant wave of murders, extortion, and kidnappings, which has set off a series of social movements, mainly in the la Montaña region, where armed townspeople seek to lock up organized criminal gangs, a situation that has shed light on alleged links between local authorities and criminals.

Last year, inhabitants of the municipalities of Huamuxtitlán, Xochihuetlán, Cualac, and Olinalá decided to arm themselves in order to kick out the criminals that operated with impunity in that zone in the la Montaña region.

Now, that same phenomenon is repeating itself in Ayutla de los Libres, the place where on March 1, 1854, the Ayutla Plan was proclaimed by Florencio Villareal and Juan N. Álvarez to disavow Antonio López de Santa Anna as president of the country.

A series of extortions and kidnappings came to a head on Saturday, January 5, when Eusebio Alberto Alvarado García, commissioner of the town of Rancho Nuevo in the Tecoanapa municipality, was kidnapped, according to official reports.

Immediately, close to 400 townspeople from three municipalities, Tecoanapa, Ayutla de los Libres, and Florencio Villareal, with the support from members of the Community Police, mobilized to rescue the commissioner.

Due to the fact that they put up checkpoints along the federal highway that joins these municipalities in the Costa Chica region, Alvarado García was freed and the kidnappers fled.

Notwithstanding, the townspeople and members of the Community Police maintained the checkpoint in Ayutla and, on Sunday, January 6, they shot a taxi driver who refused to be searched, according to the state Attorney General's Office. [Translator's note: The Tlachinollan Human Rights Center of la Montaña claims that the taxi driver was armed and tried to open fire on the men who tried to search his car.]

The justice agency opened a criminal investigation into the death of 40-year-old Cutberto Luna Chávez.

Notwithstanding, on Tuesday, January 8, governor Ángel Aguirre justified the Ayutla townspeople's actions, stating that armed self-defense "sheds light on citizens' desperation with organized crime and the absence of a response from the authorities," according to local media.

Some 200 armed civilians currently maintain a checkpoint at the entrance and exit of the municipal seat of Ayutla de los Libres and they claim they will not leave until they permanently drive out members of criminal groups that operate in the zone.

***

The Example of Armed Self-Defense Spreads in Guerrero Communities

The protection measures prove the government's failure against organized crime, says NGO
Local groups say that Governor Aguirre Rivero doesn't listen to them nor does he follow through

by Sergio Ocampo Arista, La Jornada

Nahuas from about 30 communities created the Popular Citizens Police this past December 2 in Temalcatzingo, Olinalá municipality, in the Montaña Alta. Photo: Sergio Ocampo

Chilpancingo, Guerrero, Janurary 12. Dozens of communities in the la Montaña and Costa Chica regions of Guerrero have once again become the scene for actions of armed self-defense due to a lack of response from the three levels of government to deal with the people's demands for security against the organized crime that operates in those two regions in the southeastern part of the state, where Me'pha (Tlapaneco), Ñuu savi (Mixteco), and Amusgo indigenous peoples and Afro-Mexicans live.

Led mainly by contingents from the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero (Upoeg in its Spanish initials), the communities joined the movement of citizens who are tired of crime, violations, and extortion at the hands of criminal groups.

Vidulfo Rosales Sierra of the Tlachinollan Montaña Regional Human Rights Center spoke about the causes of the popular uprising that began on January 6 in the municipal seat of Ayutla de los Libres following the kidnapping of Eusebio Álvarez Mendoza, a rancher and commissioner of the Rancho Nuevo community in the Tecoanapa municipality: "That is due to a vacuum of federal and local authority in the exercise of their functions in public security."

Townspeople from Ayutla de los Libres in the Costa Chica
work a checkpoint installed in the Guerrero
municipality without the Community Police.
Photo: Lenin Ocampo Torres

Without doubt, he added, "the security model and its policies have failed; regarding Operation Safe Guerrero, it's important to remember that last year it was in effect, but there weren't considerable advances. What is happening is proof that the criminals were not apprehended nor did it have an impact on crime levels in that zone; on the contrary, [organized crime] was strengthened."

Rosales Sierra complained, "It can't be possible that peasants who are organized with low-calibre guns are standing up to the criminals in a matter of two days, while the Army, the Navy, and police with high-powered weapons haven't had an impact in three years; that is impossible, it doesn't merit further analysis. That indicates that there is a high level of complicity and a total lack of authority; for example, the state Attorney General's Office does nothing, it knows about the relationships its police force has and it refuses to remove its personnel, and here we see the consequences."

He insisted that it is evident that "there is a high level of coexistence and complicity between the state authorities such as the Ministerial Police and the state police assigned to the El Limón community in Ayutla with the public prosecutors and judges which generated an environment that allowed organized crime to freely move in those places as if they were at home. All of that complicity allowed crime to reign and abuse the population."

That vacuum created by the government led to locals organizing themselves. "The people were fed up and decided to take security into their own hands, to rescue the principles of justice for the indigenous and mestizo peasants."

Perhaps the most important part of this popular uprising is that it demonstrates to Mexico that organized crime is not invincible and that once the people organize, they can keep crime in check, and that society shouldn't be paralyzed by the scourge "as they did these past months in the municipalities of Huamuxtitlán, Cualac, and Olinalá."

But he warned that "when the people return to their communities, [criminal groups] could react and put the safety of the peasants and their families at risk. We will be watching to see how the authorities react, because this is not about sending in more police."

He proposed that the peasants strengthen themselves and respect "the systems of uses and customs [traditional indigenous governance], to resume the peoples' traditional justice systems, and to not simply organize in the heat of the moment without creating their own justice institutions to avoid that crime threatens them."

The Organizing Process

The first manifestation of the organization of the indigenous, mestizo, and Afro-Mexican peoples was the creation of the Regional Coordinating Body of Community Authorities-Community Police (CRAC-PC) in October of 1995; the municipalities of Huamuztitlán followed their example this past September 17 with their Popular Citizens Police (PCP), as did thirty Nahua towns in Temalacatzingo in the Olinalá municipality this past December 2.

One of the almost 300 volunteer
guards from the town of Tecoanapa,
in the Costa Chica region.
Photo: Lenin Ocampo Torres

In Huamuxtitlán the PCP was created with over 100 members on September 17, 2012, following the kidnapping of 18 people by an organized crime group. Guerrero's ex-Attorney General, Alberto López Rosas, was even given a file with over thirty violent crimes, including the kidnapping of former mayor Juan Carlos Jiménez, murders of taxi drivers, the appearance of cadavers in the municipal seat, home burglaries and stolen cars, extortion of business owners, and alleged threats to the ex-mayor Soledad Romero and her husband Víctor Echeverría Valenzuela, a former leader of the teachers union.

On November 25, over 200 Mixteco peasants from at least 30 communities in the Ayutla de los Libres municipality were sworn in as new members of the Community Police to combat organized crime.

With the Mixteco communities joining the CRAC, its territory has grown to 107 towns in thirteen municipalities in Costa Chica and la Montaña: San Luis Acatlán, Marquelia, Metlatónoc, Cochoapa El Grande, Iliatenco, Malinaltepec, Altamajalcingo del Monte, Tlapa, Tlacoapa, Acatepec, Ayutla, Azoyú, and Tlacoachistlahuaca.

The municipalities that have joined the Popular Citizens Police are Huamuxtitlán, Cualac, and Olinalá, which are on the border with the states of Morelos and Puebla.

Over a Year Without a Meeting

Valentín Hernández, the CRAC's legal advisor, recalls that almost as soon as Governor Ángel Aguirre Rivero took office on April 1, 2011, they requested a meeting with him, "and it wasn't until May 28, 2012, when CRAC was given its one and only meeting, although afterwards there have been a few meetings with the compañeros with the goal of following up on the demands that were presented, which have only been minimally fulfilled."

He stated that the governor has not complied with the agreements that have been reached, "he only granted a budget of $500,000 pesos, which was given in very small payments; they only gave part of the 500 radios that they had promised, and beyond that, nothing, no uniforms, no weapons, no rations, no vehicles. As a result of this breach of agreement, we give him the authority that someone who makes promises and doesn't follow through deserves."

He believes that the governor's indifference contrasts with how the towns of Ayutla and Tecoanapa have treated the uprising, which Upoeg is leading. "Some of these issues have been raised in the Community Police assemblies, and others have come out in the media. We don't care if attention is payed to other groups as long as it isn't detrimental to the CRAC's demands and organizing process.

"We've seen that while spaces for dialogue and fulfillment of agreements have been closed to the CRAC, other groups where the Community Police has a presence are given full support; this makes it clear that the rumors that have been circulating since December 22 when the regional coordinators and commanders were appointed in the El Paraíso House of Justice in Ayutla de los Libres are true: that the Upoeg is practically working with the state government."

"What's happening in Ayutla," he stressed, "is proof of that. If you analyze the declarations the Upoeg has made this past week, it's clear that they were behind the uprising from the beginning, and that they are even inviting towns from the region, including those that belong to the CRAC, to join their movement."

Nonetheless, Valentín Hernández announced that CRAC will soon announce its official position. "There was already a meeting where it was agreed that a position that has been condensed upon between the coordinators and the council members will be given, and we'll probably emit a formal communique on Monday."

Regarding the presence of organized crime in the communities that belong to the CRAC's houses of justice located in San Luis Acatlán, Espino Blanco in the Malinaltepec municipality, and Zitlaltepec in the Metlatónoc municipality, "there's tranquility, although we are on alert due to the situation in Ayutla, it's business as usual."

According to the lawyer from Tlachinollan, Aguirre Rivero has had a very distinct attitude towards the CRAC: "the insensitivity and lack of interest in the people's normative systems is plainly evident. The government has distain for the CRAC's normative system, when it is a model that could put security back on track and show us how to resolve the problem of insecurity."

Instead, he insisted, the government, far from addressing problems, has criminalized social struggle, "it has designed and maintained the peoples in oblivion, and now it's going to have to face the problem because it's just around the corner and it has to deal with the communities' uprising, because it has to respond to this problem that demonstrates the failures of the state's justice system."

The Tenacious Zapatista Persistence

2013-01-11T21:17:00.000-06:00

by Raúl Zibechi
translated by Kristin Bricker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2013-01-01T13:09:00.000-06:00

ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO.

December 29, 2012.

To whom it may concern up there above:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ladies and gentlemen??

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, sorry, let us continue with our ignorance:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante Marcos.
Mexico, December 2012.

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

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

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

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

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

Translation: Clayton Conn
Original in Spanish posted here

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation Announces Next Steps

2012-12-31T11:20:00.000-06:00

Mexico

December 30, 2012

To the People of Mexico:

To the Peoples and Goverments of the World:

Brothers and Sisters:

Compañeros and compañeras:

This past December 21, 2012, in the pre-dawn hours, tens of thousands of indigenous Zapatistas mobilized and we took over, peacefully and in silence, 5 municipal seats in the Mexican southeastern state of Chiapas.

San Cristobal, Chiapas. December 21, 2012

In the cities of Palenque, Altamirano, Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, and San Cristobal de las Casas, we watched you and we watched ourselves in silence.

This is not a message of resignation.

It is not one of war, death, or destruction.

Our message is one of struggle and resistance.

After the media-driven coup d'état that exalted a poorly concealed and even more poorly disguised ignorance to the federal executive branch, we made ourselves present so that you would know that if they never left, neither did we.

Six years ago, a segment of the political and intellectual class went out in search of someone to blame for its loss. At that time we were in cities and communities, struggling for justice for an Atenco that was not fashionable at that time.

On that yesterday first they defamed us, and then they wanted to shut us up. Too incapable and dishonest to see that within themselves they had and have the seeds of their own destruction, they tried to make us disappear with lies and complicit silence.

Six years later, two things remain clear:

They don't need us to fail.

We don't need them to survive.

We never left, even though media from all over the spectrum have dedicated themselves to making you believe that, and we are reemerging as the indigenous Zapatistas that we are and will be.

In these past years we've strengthened ourselves and we have significantly improved our living conditions. Our standard of living is superior to that of the indigenous communities that are linked to the governments in power, that receive charity and squander it all on alcohol and useless things.

Our homes improve without hurting nature by imposing roads upon it that are foreign to it. In our villages, the land that was previously used to fatten estate owners' cattle is now used to grow the corn, beans, and vegetables that brighten our tables.
Our work has the double satisfaction of providing us with what we need to live honorably and to contribute to the collective growth of our communities.
Our boys and girls go to a school that teaches them their own history, that of their fatherland and of the world, as well as the sciences and techniques they need to grow without no longer being indigenous.

The indigenous Zapatista women are not sold as merchandise. The indigenous PRI members go to our hospitals, clinics, and laboratories because in those provided by the government there are no medicines, nor equipment, nor doctors, nor qualified personnell.

Our culture florishes not insolation, but rather enriched by contact with the cultures of other peoples of Mexico and the world.

We govern and we govern ourselves, always seeking agreement before confrontation.

All of this has been achieved not only without the government, the political class, and the media that accompanies them, but also while resisting their attacks of all kinds.

We have demonstrated, yet again, that we are who we are. With our silence, we were present.

Now, with our word we announce that:

First: we reaffirm and consolidate our membership in the National Indigenous Congress [CNI],a space for meeting with the original peoples of our country.

Second: we will resume contact with our compañeros and compañeras who are Adherents to the Sixth eclaration of the Lacandon Jungle in Mexico and around the world.

Third: we will try to construct the necessary bridges towards the social movements that have arisen and will arise, not to lead them or take their place, but rather to learn from them, from their history, from their journeys and fates.

For this we have achieved the support of individuals and groups in different parts of the world who comprise the support teams for the EZLN's Sixth and International commissions, so that they will become communication links between the Zapatista Support Bases and the individuals, groups, and collectives that are Adherents to the Sixth Declaration in Mexico and around the world who still maintain their conviction and dedication to the construction of a leftist non-institutional alternative.

Fourth: our critical distance from the Mexican political class will continue; they have done nothing but prosper at the cost of the necessities and the hopes of humble and simple people.

Fifth: regarding the federal, state, and municipal bad governments--executive, legislative, and judicial--, and the media that accompanies them, we say to them the following:

The bad governments from all over the political spectrum, without exception, have done everything they can to destroy us, buy us, and make us give in. The PRI, PAN, PRD, PVEM, PT, CC, and the future RN party have attacked us militarily, politically, socially, and ideologically.

The corporate media tried to make us disappear, first with servile and opportunistic slander, later with cunning and complicit silence. Those whom they served and whose moneys breastfeed them are no longer around. And those who have taken their place won't last longer than their predecesors.

As was evident on December 21, 2012, they've all failed.

It remains to be seen if the federal, executive, legislative, and judicial government decides to once again resort to the counterinsurgency policy that has only achieved a rickety farse clumsily based on media management, or if it recognizes and fulfills its duty and raises indigenous rights and culture to constitutional ranking as established by the so-called "San Andres Accords," signed by the federal government in 1996, which was ruled by the same party that now controls the executive branch.

It remains to be seen if the state government will decide if it continues its dishonest and despicable strategy of its predecesor which, in addition to being corrupt and deceitful, used the Chiapan people's money for his own enrichment and that of his accomplices and set about openly buying voices and pens in the media, while he heaped misery upon the Chiapan people, at the same time that he was using police and paramilitaries to try to stop the organizational advance of the Zapatista villages; or if it will instead, with truth and justice, accept our existence and the idea that a new form of social life is blossoming in Zapatista territory, Chiapas, Mexico. Blossoming that draws the attention of honest people all over the planet.

It remains to be seen if the municipal governments decide to keep swallowing the millstones that the anti-Zapatista or supposedly "Zapatista" organizations use to extort them to attack our communities, or if they instead use that money to improve the living conditions of their constituents.

It remains to be seen if the people of Mexico who organize themselves in electoral struggle and resist decide to continue viewing us as the enemies or rivals upon whom they can unload their frustration about the frauds and attacks that, in the end, all of us suffer, and if in their struggle for power they continue to ally themselves with our persecutors; or if they finally see in us another way of doing politics.

Sixth: in the coming days the EZLN, through its Sixth and International commissions, will announce a series of initiatives of a civil and peaceful nature, to continue walking together with the other original peoples of Mexico and the whole continent, along with those in Mexico and around the whole world who resist and struggle down and to the left.

Brothers and sisters:
Compañeros and compañeras:

Before, we had the good fortune of honest and noble attention from various media outlets. We thanked them for it then. But that was completely erased with their later attitude.

Those who bet that we only existed in the media and that with the siege of lies and silence we would disappear were wrong.

When there weren't cameras, microphones, pens, ears, and looks, we existed.

When they defamed us, we existed.

When they silenced us, we existed.

And here we are, existing.

Our pace, as has been demonstrated, does not depend upon our impact in the media, but rather upon the world's and its parts' understanding, upon the indigenous wisdom that dictates our steps, upon the unflinching courage that comes from below and to the left.

From now on, our word will begin to be selective in its recipient and, with the exception of a few occassions, will only be understood by those who have walked and walk with us without giving in to the media and current trends.

Here, with not a few errors and a lot of difficulties, another way of doing politics is already a reality.
Few, very few, will have the priviledge of knowing it and learning from it directly.

Nineteen years ago we surprised them by taking over their cities with fire and blood. Now we've done it again, without weapons, without death, without destruction.

That is how we differentiate ourselves from those who, during their administrations, delivered and deliver death to their constituents.

We are the same from 500 years ago, from 44 years ago, from 30 years ago, from 20 years ago, from just a few days ago.

We are the Zapatistas, the smallest, the ones who live, struggle, and die in the last corner of the fatherland, those who don't give up, those who don't sell out, those who don't give in.

Brothers and sisters:
compañeros and compañeras:

We are the Zapatistas, and we send you a hug.

Democracy!

Freedom!

Justice!

From the mountains of the Mexican southeast,
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee -- General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico. December 2012-January 2013.

In Spanish: EZLN Anuncia sus Pasos Siguientes
Translation: Kristin Bricker

Denied the Right to Vote in Mexico’s Presidential Election

2012-07-02T18:26:00.000-05:00

by Kristin Bricker, Americas MexicoBlog

My husband and I moved away from our voting district in Mexico State in large part due to increasing violence. In May 2011, I suffered a botched kidnapping attempt in broad daylight. In October 2011, we were enjoying a drink in a quiet, well-lit bar when municipal police allegedly working for the La Familia criminal organization burst in, locked down the bar, and held us all at gunpoint while they pressured the owner to pay his quota to La Familia. He was the last bar owner in town who refused to pay criminals for the right to operate his business. After about a half-hour of lockdown, we left the bar unscathed. Bar patrons in the next town over, however, were less fortunate. Three days after our ordeal, gunmen allegedly working for La Familia opened fire in a bar that refused to pay its quota, shooting five patrons, including two women.

By March 2012, bodies hanging from bridges or executed and dumped in mass graves or in front of public events were becoming relatively commonplace in the farming community where we lived. So we moved.

After settling in to our new home in a new state, my husband and I debated whether or not to vote in the presidential elections. We’d never voted, nor had any member of our family for that matter. Our family was disillusioned with the electoral process, and the “leftist” candidate, Andres Manuel López Obrador, had promised United States Vice-President Joe Biden that he would continue the drug war if he were elected president. Our family had always preferred grassroots organizing to participation in the electoral process.

But this election was different. My husband and I spent two years in Mexico State under the rule of Enrique Peña Nieto, and we watched as his security policies sent our quiet, close-knit town into a tailspin. Our friends and family were tortured in Atenco in 2006 during a violent police operation ordered by Peña Nieto. No government officials have been punished for the unthinkable things they did to our family, even though we still have to live with the emotional and physical consequences of the torture. On the contrary, Peña Nieto was rewarded for his deeds when his party named him their presidential candidate.

The #YoSoy132 student movement against Peña Nieto’s candidacy convinced us that voting against the man who had done us so much harm was both noble and necessary. We saw ourselves reflected in that movement. The students didn’t belong to a political party. They weren’t faithful followers of a candidate that they felt would single-handedly change Mexico for the better. They simply knew that Enrique Peña Nieto could not become the president of Mexico, and we knew that, too. So we decided to vote for Andres Manuel López Obrador.

Mexican law prohibits any changes to voter registration in the six months prior to an election, which meant that my husband was unable to change his voting district to our new home in the state of Oaxaca. On Election Day, he left early to vote at one of the Special Voting Booths set up for citizens who are voting outside of their districts.

When he arrived at the polling station, the line for those waiting to vote stretched down four city blocks. Because he had other obligations that day, he decided to return in the afternoon. He had until 6pm to vote. When he returned hours later, the line was much shorter, but then he found out why: earlier in the day, election officials handed out numbers to those waiting in line: 750 numbers, one for each ballot the Special Voting Booth received for citizens voting outside of their districts. The rest of those waiting in line were told to go home or find another Special Voting Booth--this voting booth had no more ballots.
My husband visited another three polling stations that were equipped with Special Voting Booths, and none had enough ballots for the citizens who wanted to vote. Nancy Davies, a Mexican citizen and founding member of the Oaxaca Study Action Group, reports that by 3:30 pm, signs were up in Oaxaca’s town square stating that none of the area’s six Special Voting Booths had ballots, news that she says nearly provoked a riot downtown.

As the 6 pm deadline closed in, those who did receive numbers were becoming anxious. One woman at the back of the line said that she had been waiting in line since 11am. An elderly gentleman who was just casting his vote at 6:30 said that he took his place in line at 8. He was number 326. As they waited all day in the burning sun then pouring rain, they watched people with numbers give up and go home.
Voters began to complain about the long waits to the election officials in charge of their polling stations. “There’s so few of us here. We should have voted already! How is it that you’re taking so long to let us vote?” complained one man to an election official, who told him to file a formal complaint with the Federal Elections Institute (IFE). A man who was unable to cast his vote commented that he believed election officials were intentionally delaying the voting process so that potential voters would give up and go home.

My husband and I were shocked and dismayed that he was unable to vote because the government had provided the Special Voting Booths with so few ballots. Those who are forced to vote in the Special Voting Booths instead of their designated polling stations are those who have been harmed the most by the federal government’s policies. They are Mexico’s internal refugees, displaced by the violence and insecurity that the current president unleashed when he deployed the military in the war on drugs. They are the unemployed who were forced to travel to look for work because there was none at home, thanks to the president’s disastrous economic policies. They know better than anyone else what is wrong with the federal government’s policies because they have lived it in flesh and blood, yet on July 1 they were denied their constitutional right to vote for the next president.

Originally published in the CIP Americas Program's MexicoBlog.

Proposal for a National Pact for Direct Democracy that Would Bring Together Zapatistas and Peace Movement

2012-01-14T03:44:00.001-06:00

The following is part of an exchange between Professor Luis Villoro and the Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos. In that exchange, Villoro and Marcos contemplated the current security crisis that Mexico faces, as well as the nascent Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity's attempts to counter that crisis.

In this letter, Villoro and other Mexican intellectuals propose a "national pact" (something that the peace movement attempted in 2011) that would unite Mexican society around the goal of direct democracy.

Luis Villoro's Response to the Third Letter from Subcomandante Marcos

Greetings.

1. Let's continue this epistolary exchange by sharing visions when faced with the devastation that our country suffers, utilizing the reflection that you mention without trying to discover TRUTHS.

We agree that we can't hope for anything from the party-ocracy. As you Zapatistas say, "all politicians are the same." The institutional left as stopped being leftist.

2. I also agree that it is unjustifiable to blame the victims, a practice that is commonplace in the government, and I salute the respect that you have demonstrated in your last letter towards the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity that Javier Sicilia leads. I share that respect with an additional recommendation: to continue, yes, but without submitting oneself to the State's game.

3. A short while ago, Pablo González Casanova, Víctor Flores Olea, and I met because we were worried about the severity of the current situation. We finally managed to outline what we consider to be some of the necessary bases for a "national pact" for a Movement of movements, with the goal of making direct democracy a reality, that which is exercised in Zapatista peasant and indigenous communities, from below: that which can best be considered a real democracy. Let me share some points:

a. Direct Democracy beyond political parties.

b. Recognition of and support for the rights of indigenous peoples and their autonomies.

c. Defend national sovereignty, individual rights, and social and community rights.

d. Promote national education, public health, and social security.

e. Restructure the external debt and fiscal policy as well as recuperate the national patrimony to promote a new self-sustaining development project.

All of this, rescuing the idea of a Mexico that equals its life with its thinking.

With variations that will be determined, this project is an invitation to collectives, localities, entities, and sectors--that search for new alternatives for freedom, justice, and democracy--to form a minimum program that isn't just about talk, and that encourages other countries in our America.

4. This proposal comes about keeping in mind the agreement, already stated, that the alternative to the existing domination can not be a revolution in the traditional sense, but rather an organization such as that which the Other Campaign proposes.

5. We venture to say that the aforementioned "pact" could be strengthened with the coming together of two freedom movements: the Zapatista movement and Javier Sicilia's movement.

Wishing you the best,

Luis Villoro

---translated from the original Spanish by Kristin Bricker

Rural Student Protesters Under Siege in Guerrero, Two Killed by Police

2011-12-13T15:39:00.004-06:00

by Kristin Bricker

Plainclothes police opened fire on unarmed students.
Photo: El Universal

Mexico's normales rurales, or rural teaching schools, are publicly funded socialist schools that train poor peasants to be rural teachers. In a country where many rural students don't have the opportunity to study because there are no schools in their area, or the schools don't have teachers, the rural teaching schools are crucial to rural development.

The rural teaching schools believe that a populace must be educated in order to demand that their rights be respected and to organize to raise their standard of living. For this reason, the Mexican government is attempting to shut down all of the normales rurales by slashing their budgets, doing away with the boarding schools (making it nearly impossible for the schools to teach their desired student base, which is rural, marginalized, isolated, poor students), slashing the incoming class sizes, reducing the number of teaching positions guaranteed to graduates, and eventually shutting down the schools entirely.

The government's position has forced the normalistas to defend their schools. The student union frequently negotiates contracts with government officials, and like any union, they use protest to strengthen their hand during these negotiations. They frequently use highway blockades to force a meeting, as was the case in Guerrero yesterday.

Photo: EFE

The students were unarmed; the police immediately responded to the protest with high-powered assault rifles.

What follows are translated clips from media reports about the confrontation. The first two articles are regarding the confrontation itself; the third article provides more background on the situation at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School and what led up to the protest; and the fourth is an update on the wounded, detained, and disappeared, as well as continuing police and military operations against the students.

Police Kill Two Students While Clearing a Highway Blockade
*They were students at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School
*The protesters demand a meeting with Gov. Angel Aguirre
*The students report wounded and disappeared persons

by Sergio Ocampo Arista, La Jornada
translated by Kristin Bricker

Chilpancingo, Gro., December 12. Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, students at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teaching School in Ayotzinapa, died after they were hit by shots fired by federal and state police, as well as agents from the state attorney general's office, during a violent [police operation to] clear a group of students from that school who were blocking the Mexico-Acapulco Sun Freeway and a federal highway near the city of Chilpancingo.

At about 11:45am on Monday, about 500 formalists arrived in buses, supported by 26 indigenous people from the Peasant Organization of the Tecoanapa Municipality, and another 20 from the organization Xanii Tsavvi ("Mixtec Dream"), and closed the lanes of the aforementioned highways.

Their main demand is a meeting with Governor Angel Aguirre Rivero, whom they accuse of standing them up four times. They also ask that classes be reinitiated in the school. They have been suspended since November 2 because the teachers "are trying to impose" Eugenio Hernández García as school director. The students say he is a repressor.

Other demands are an increase in the class size from 140 to 170 students for the 2011-2012 freshman class and that the potential students who have a average of 7 points [on a scale of 1-10] be permitted to take the admission exam.

The blockade had barely begun when at least 300 officers with the federal and state police, with the latter led by Guerrero's undersecretary of Security, General Ramón Arreola Ibarría. Later, agents from the attorney general's office arrived.

Workers from the Servicio Centro Comercial gas station recounted that just minutes after noon, the federal agents attempted to clear the formalists, who repelled the police by throwing stones, bottle rockets, and molotov cocktails.

At that point, in the gas station, some of the students from Ayotzinapa set fire to a gas pump, and that was when the federal agents shot into the air. [Translator's note: the students deny that they set fire to the gas station, see below.]

Dozens of state police, led by Gen. Arreola, were positioned about 50 meters away, on the bridge over Huacapa River near the Liverpool department store.

Several of the police were dressed in plainclothes. "Let's go, cabrones!" yelled the undersecretary of Security to incite his officers to confront the formalists. Several agents fired their guns.

[...]

The students were attacked on two flanks, from the north and the south, from both sides of the Sun Freeway, and from the Huacapa River bridge.

One group of students attempted to take cover in one of the busses, and another attempted to repel the police with bottle rockets and stones, but they didn't succeed.

On the contrary, the gunfire intensified. The bus windows were shattered and the side panels were pocked with bullet holes.

Astonished and nervous, drivers of cars, busses, and trucks who witnessed the indecent from both lanes, fled to protect themselves from the gunfire.

The driver of a truck with license plate number 249-DC-5 was grazed in the face by a bullet, and an elderly man who took refuge in the truck was detained by police. His whereabouts remain unknown.

Police also detained Eric Escobar, a reporter with the Chilpancingo weekly Trinchera, whom they beat in the face and body and then later released.

At 12:10pm the gunfire intensified, and that is when student Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús was killed.

Jorge Alexis Herrera was shot down at about the same time. Their classmates, thinking that they were only injured, tried to get them onto a bus to protect them, but when they realized that they were dead they decided to leave them on the ground.

The gunfire continued for about 20 minutes from both lanes. The police, guns in hand, chased the students, who threw stones at the agents.

Several students took refuse in the hills located on both sides of the highway and from there they moved to their school. Others headed towards the town of Petaquillas, located about five kilometers from the highway blockade.

Some fled towards the municipality of Tierra Colorada, located about 45 kilometers away. According to the students, two of their classmates were injured.

On the ground there remained stones, pipes, molotov cocktails, and dozens of bullet shells from weapons of the calibers that police use.

The shooting ended at about 12:35pm. Minutes later, three military vehicles arrived. They stayed for about a half an hour and then headed for the town of Petaquillas.

[…]

At 2:35pm the highway was reopened in both directions. The persecution of the students didn't cease. The police searched the hills for formalists until after 4pm.

Herrera Pino was from Atoyac de Alvarez, Guerrero, and Echeverría de Jesús was from Tixtla, Guerrero. Near their bodies were 7.62 caliber shells for a G-3 rifle.

[…]

We Were Completely Unarmed, Say the Normalistas
El Universal
translated by Kristin Bricker

El Universal's images from the confrontation: http://www.eluniversaltv.com.mx/detalle.php?d=27281

Rural teaching students who participated in the confrontation yesterday with police in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, say that they were unarmed and that they didn't even have bottle rockets. They blame the state agents for having initiated the aggression with gunfire, which led to the dead of two students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teaching School in Ayotzinapa.

The students, represented by student Jersey Peñaloza, said that they were never at the level of the police because of the weapons the police carried. They said their intention was only to protest and to demand a meeting with Gov. Angel Aguirre Rivero.

He added that according to a preliminary list from the State Attorney General's Office, nine people were detained following the confrontation, although Peñaloza says that at least another 15 students are disappeared, and it is not known if they were detained.

"We demand that this crime that has been committed against our classmates does not remain in impunity, and that those responsible be punished. They know who acted, there are videos that show that it was them (the police) who initiated the aggression, the unarmed students sought refuge," he pointed out.

Peñaloza stated that the agents kept shooting at them, and that the students only defended themselves with sticks and stones.

Regarding the fire in the gas station, the students said that it was the police who retreated to the gas station and set it on fire, and then later blamed the students.

[…]

"We Now Have the Green Light," Said Police Before Shooting
by Rogelio Velázquez, Contralinea
translated by Kristin Bricker

December 13, 2011

Students from the rural teaching school in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, demanded negotiations with the governor and recognition of their demands. The blocked the Sun Freeway as a form of pressure. The police operation's toll: two students murdered, at least five injured with gunshots, and 18 detained. "It was the Federal Police who shot at us; many of us fled for the hills and even there they pursued us with helicopters," they said in an interview.

This past December 12 at about 11am, students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teaching School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, began to block traffic on the Sun Freeway, which connects Mexico City to Acapulco. Their demands were clear: a meeting with the state government and compliance with a verbal agreement made my Governor Angel Heladio Aguirre Rivero to increase the incoming class size from 140 to 170 students and to grant 30 teaching positions to the school's graduates.

The operation was led by Federal Police, who were accompanied by Ministerial Police [from the Attorney General's office], and state police.

"There were about 400 of us--students and people from social organizations. We blocked the freeway because the governor only says 'yes,' but he won't sign our demands. It has to be signed before the year ends," one of the students who participated in the protest told Contralinea. He is in hiding in Chilpancingo.

"Special Forces from the Federal Police arrived to clear our blockade. We were dialoguing with them. Then one of the police made a phone call--we don't know to whom--and when he hung up, they said that they had the green light to do whatever they wanted."

"That was when the Federal Police began to shoot tear gas at us. Some of us ran. Immediately afterwards they began to shoot us point-blank. They didn't care that there were children and women with us. The shooting continued, and all of us ran in different directions."

The bodies of two students, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino, 22, and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, 21, were hit by bullets and fell to the highway. The young men were students at the rural teaching school.

"Afterwards, they chased is in vehicles and on foot while they shot at us. Some of us who hid in the hills were chased by helicopters. We can't communicate with our classmates because the cell phones aren't working," he commented, alleging that the lines were cut. "They're still looking for us."

Bertoldo Martínez, president of the Coalition of Democratic Organizations of the State of Guerrero explains that the protest also included the demand that missing environmentalists Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista, both disappeared since December 6 as they were headed from Chilpancingo to Mexico City, be presented alive. [Translator's note: Alarcón and Bautista were members of poet Javier Sicilia's anti-drug war Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), and were kidnapped on their way to MPJD meetings.]

The human rights defender says that the Guerrero government is responsible for what is happening: "What is happening in the state is grave and shameful. These sorts of situations don't get solved. For example, the supposed suicide of Joel Santana Villa was a murder perpetrated by the State," he commented, referring to the death of an environmentalist who was imprisoned in the Iguala prison since last June. His death occurred this past December 2 inside the prison.

Students from the Federation of Peasant Socialist Students of Mexico (FECSM) commented in a press conference--which took place in the offices of Local 9 of the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE)--that they still don't know the whereabouts of the detained (about 24) and they blame Gov. Angel Aguirre, Federal Police, State Police, and the Mexican military for the murder of the formalists.

"The attack occurred during a state of calm. This was a normal protest, just like the ones we always do. Now, after this, there's going to be movement," which means that they will take more forceful actions and that there will be more mobilizations. "A few months ago the governor came to the school to talk with us, but he didn't want to sign anything. His predecessor, ex-governor Zeferino Torreblanca, starved us, and this governor kills us."

Moreover, they stated that the rural teaching school is besieged by the Mexican military: approximately 14 military vehicles surround the school. About twenty of their classmates are inside. They fear that the school will be taking over by the armed forces in the next few hours.

They also note that the Secretary of Education in Guerrero has not responded to their demands. They directly blame [President] Felipe Calderón for the strategy of war that is being carried out and for neoliberal policies that have deteriorated education in the country.

In a communiqué, the Interior Ministry said that it is working in coordination with Guerrero authorities to investigate the incident and to hold responsible those who were responsible for the homicides. Meanwhile, the Federal Attorney General's Office opened criminal investigation PGR/GRO/CHI/CASO/387/2011 for any federal crimes that resulted from the incident.

José Ramón Salinas, spokesman for the Federal Police, stated that the Federal Police had not participated in the operation; however, Ramón Arreola Ibarra, undersecretary of Police Control for the state of Guerrero, contradicted him and commented that the Federal Police broke up the protest.

The government of Guerrero made a statement on its web site. It explained that the governor had met with the students on various occasions and that the majority of their demands had been resolved. Those that had not been resolved, "is because [the government] didn't have the ability to resolve them immediately." Likewise, the statement reiterated the government's willingness to resolve the problems and demands from diverse sectors of society, respecting free expression of ideas and protest.

In response, the students stated: "We don't believe them. How is it possible that they want a dialogue while they are preparing to close down the school by force? They want to close it because inside we practice self-government."

The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), initiated a formal complaint with case number CGCP/309/11 regarding the aggression against the students. In a communiqué it mentioned that it would provide accompaniment, legal support, psychological support, and medical attention if it is required to the victims' families. Moreover, it declared the incident to be "lamentable and deplorable, and it should not, under any circumstance, remain in impunity."

Normalista Injured in Yesterday's Police Operation is in Grave Condition; 24 Detainees Are Freed
by Sergio Ocampo and Hértor Briseño, La Jornada
translated by Kristin Bricker


Several of the detainees say they were tortured in police custody

Chilpancingo, Gro. The Student Society of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School stated that student José David Espíritu, who was injured yesterday as police cleared a highway blockade in the capital city carried out by students, has been operated on and his condition is listed as grave.

Iván Alberto Alvarez Adame and Rubén Eduviges Cuautololo were also injured during the operation. Today the State Attorney General's Office released 24 students who had been detained.

Of those, 11 are from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teaching School, five are from the Autonomous University of Guerrero's Economics Department, four are from Chilpancingo Tech, and four are peasants from the Coyuca de Benítez municipality in the Costa Grande region of Guerrero.

Manuel Olivares of the Guerrero Human Rights Network, denounced that student Gerardo Torres Pérez, whom the state attorney general's office is accusing of having shot an AK-47, told non-governmental organizations that visited him that he was brutally tortured into stating that he fired a weapon.

The normalista said that the police took him to an area near the municipality of Zumpango de Neri, located about 10 kilometers from the capital, where they took him out of the vehicle in a parcel of land and made him fire the weapon four times.

Olivares also said that the whereabouts of 13 people who came to support the students are unknown. The missing are from the municipalities of Ayutla de los Libres and Tecoanapa.

At 1pm there will be a protest march in the capital. The central demand is the ouster of the Chilpancingo government and the removal of governor Angel Aguirre's cabinet.

People Are Still Being Detained

Jersey Peñaloza, representing the normalistas, that hours after "the massacre" teachers and people uninvolved with the protest were still being detained. Some escaped and have taken cover in the hills.

[…]

Another student said that some of the detained have said that they were tortured.

[…]

Mexican Civil Society Wants President and Drug Traffickers To Face War Crimes Charges In The International Criminal Court

2011-10-17T22:01:00.000-05:00

by Kristin Bricker, SSR Centre

The accused (from left): Public Security Secretary

Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo

Galván Galván, President Felipe Calderón, and Navy

Secretary Mariano Francisco Saynez Mendoza.

A coalition of lawyers, academics, activists, and journalists has announced that it will seek the prosecution of President Felipe Calderón in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from his deployment of the military to battle drug trafficking organizations. “Our petition is supported by over 20,000 signatures, both handwritten and electronic,” they said in a written statement, “making it the largest citizens’ complaint that the ICC has ever received.”

Netzai Sandoval, the lawyer who is preparing the complaint, argues that the ICC has jurisdiction in this case because Mexico is a signatory to the Rome Statute, and because the country’s drug war constitutes an “armed conflict not of an international nature.” The Rome Statute, which created the court in 2002, defines an “armed conflict not of an international nature” as “armed conflicts that take place in the territory of a State when there is protracted armed conflict between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups.”

Details of the Complaint

In addition to President Calderón, Sandoval has requested that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor investigate Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo Galván Galván, Navy Secretary Francisco Saynez Mendoza, drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, and “other authorities, military officials, and drug traffickers who are responsible for war crimes in Mexico.”

The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for determining admissibility, defendants, and charges. However, Sandoval has requested that the Prosecutor investigate both government officials and drug trafficking organizations for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He argues that both sides of the conflict have committed murders, rape and sexual slavery, forced disappearances, physical mutilations, inhuman treatment and torture, extensive destruction of property, and attacks against the civilian population, all of which are classified as war crimes or crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.

Sandoval notes that the Army has murdered and tortured innocent civilians at military checkpoints and during military operations. “It has attempted to cover up these incidents in order to guarantee impunity,” argues Sandoval. In 2010, for example, the military killed two students at the elite private university Tec de Monterrey. Soldiers planted weapons on the students’ corpses and removed their backpacks and student IDs to make them appear to be cartel gunmen.

The complaint that Sandoval will present to the ICC also details war crimes committed by criminal organizations. It specifically mentions the massacres perpetuated by unidentified gunmen at drug rehabilitation clinics that are occurring with alarming frequency in various northern states. Moreover, he accuses drug trafficking organizations of forcibly recruiting children under fifteen years of age, which has been demonstrated by arrests of children such as 13-year-old Edgar Jiménez Lugo, a cartel hitman who says that a drug trafficking organization kidnapped him when he was eleven and ordered him to kill or be killed.

Sandoval argues that both the government and drug trafficking organizations have committed physical mutilations. Early in the war, drug trafficking organizations began to terrorize the civilian population by dumping tortured and mutilated bodies in public places such as in dance clubs, alongside highways, hanging from overpasses, or in front of government buildings or schools. In late 2009, the government responded in kind: the Marines killed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva in his home, and then employees from the medical examiner’s office stripped him down to his underwear and covered his bullet-ridden corpse with bloody peso notes and U.S. dollar bills. They took pictures of his semi-nude body and leaked the pictures to the press, presumably to intimidate Beltran Leyva’s criminal organization.

The complaint also accuses officials from the Mexican government’s National Immigration Institute (INM) of collaborating with drug trafficking organizations to kidnap and traffic Central American migrants who pass through Mexico on their way to the United States. The government has admitted widespread corruption in the INM, where alarming numbers of immigration agents detain migrants and then hand them over to cartels in exchange for a fee. The cartels themselves frequently kidnap dozens of migrants in a single raid. The criminals detain the migrants in “safe houses” while theydemand ransoms from the migrants’ families in the United States, or they enslave the kidnapped migrants to work in fields or—in the case of women—the sex industry as prostitutes or in pornographic movies.

The Gravity Threshold

Due to its limited capacity, the ICC declines to investigate some cases in which it has compelling evidence that war crimes have occurred, but do not reach the ICC’s standard for gravity. “Even where there is a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed, this is not sufficient for the initiation of an investigation by the International Criminal Court,” wrote ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo when he declined to file charges against coalition forces for war crimes committed in Iraq. “While, in a general sense, any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court is ‘grave,’ the [Rome] Statute requires an additional threshold of gravity even where the subject-matter jurisdiction is satisfied. This assessment is necessary as the Court is faced with multiple situations involving hundreds or thousands of crimes and must select situations” in which the commission of said war crimes are “committed as a part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.”

Migrants’ plight in Mexico might be one of the complaint’s more compelling aspects for the ICC because the crimes committed against them are so widespread. Germán Guillermo Ramírez Garduaza, who runs the “Santa Faustina Kowalska” Migrante Shelter in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, estimates that 80% of the Centeral American women who pass through his shelter have been raped during their journey. “They consider rape to be part of the price they pay to migrate,” explains Fermina Rodriguez of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center in Chiapas.

The Mexican government’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) documented 214 cases of mass kidnappings of migrants in 2010 alone, with a total of 11,333 victims. This number does not include unreported mass kidnappings, nor does it include kidnappings of small numbers of migrants, meaning that the total number of Central American migrants kidnapped in Mexico is likely much higher.

Sandoval hopes that the staggering statistics of over 50,000 dead, thousands of forced disappearances, at least 230,000 displaced persons, and the appearance of severely mutilated bodies left on public display in various parts of the country on a daily basis will convince the court that high-ranking government officials and drug trafficking organizations are committing war crimes in Mexico “on a massive scale.”

Goals of an ICC Investigation

Unlike the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), which allows victims to sue State parties over a range of human rights violations, the ICC prosecutes individuals—not States—who are allegedly responsible for a very limited range of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. Whereas the IACtHR has the power to order States to reform laws or policies that prevent victims from obtaining justice, the ICC only seeks punitive damages, such as imprisonment or indemnity for victims.

Nonetheless, Sandoval believes that an ICC investigation could have important political implications in Mexico. He hopes that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor will be able to obtain confidential information regarding the military’s role in the drug war because the Mexican military has denied many Transparency Act requests on the basis of national security. “On May 9, 2007, [Calderón] published an executive order to create an elite force called the Cuerpo de Fuerzas de Apoyo Federal [Federal Support Forces],” explained Sandoval. “This elite unit is directly controlled by Felipe Calderón and was involved in the drug war… There is no General or other official between Calderón and those soldiers.” Sandoval hopes that the Office of the Prosecutor will investigate the secretive Federal Support Forces for any possible human rights abuses, because domestic attempts to obtain information about their actions have been futile. If the ICC finds that the elite unit is responsible for human rights abuses, Sandoval argues that it can hold Calderón directly responsible for their actions.

Due to the corruption and complicity with organized crime that prevails in Mexico’s security institutions, many victims never report crimes for fear of retaliation. Mexico’s Census Bureau (INEGI) reports that in 2010, 24 percent of the Mexican population reported being the victim of a crime. However, only 12.3 percent of them reported the crimes to the police. Of those crimes that were reported to the police, the police only investigated eight percent.

“Mexico is a country of impunity,” argues John Ackerman, a legal scholar with the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Legal Investigations Institute. Ackerman says that bringing a case before the ICC is a way for citizens “to use legal, peaceful means to demand justice and accountability.”

Sandoval hopes that the ICC will open offices in Mexico to carry out a direct and impartial investigation into possible war crimes. “The ICC should open field offices in different parts of the country so that victims can go there and give direct testimony.”

Even though ICC investigations can drag on for years, Sandoval hopes that the complaint will pressure Mexican politicians to reform the country’s security strategy soon. “The candidates who will compete in the 2012 presidential election should know that if they continue with a militaristic policy that covers up soldiers’ crimes, they will share Calderón’s fate,” said Sandoval. “One would hope that they would begin to discuss a plan for the military to return to its barracks, and embark on a new strategy for confronting organized crime.”

Kristin Bricker is a Mexico-based freelance journalist who specializes in militarization, human rights, social movements and the drug war in Latin America.