Communiqué from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission—Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN
Mexico,
September 15th and 16th, 2008
To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:
To the adherents of the Zezta Interazional:
To the People of Mexico:
To the Peoples of the World:
Compañeras and Compañeros:
Brothers and Sisters:
Once again here’s our word.
This is what we see, this is what we are looking at.
This has come to our ears, to our brown heart.
I.
Up there, they intend to repeat their history.
They once again want to impose on us their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.
When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them.
They steal our work, our strength.
They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life.
The cities pursue and expel us.
The countryside dies and we along with it.
Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police.
In the world, we are illegal, undocumented, unwanted.
We are pursued.
Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life.
And up there they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment.
Down here we are being left with nothing.
Except rage.
And dignity.
There is no ear for our pain, except that of the people like us.
We are no one.
We are alone, and just with our dignity and our rage.
Rage and dignity are our bridges, our languages.
Let us listen to each other then, let us know each other.
Let our rage grow and become hope.
Let our dignity take root again and breed another world.
We have seen and listened.
Our voice is small to be the echo of that word, our gaze small for such an amount of rage, a rage with such dignity.
We need to see each other, look at each other, talk to each other, listen to each other.
We are others, the other.
If this world doesn’t have a place for us, then another world must be made.
With no other tool than our rage, no other material than our dignity.
We still must find each other, know each other.
What is lack is yet to come… Falta lo que falta…
II.
Now, three years after the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, the EZLN has undertaken a collective assessment, nourished by the broad horizon that our compañeros of the Other Campaign in Mexico and the Zezta Internazional across the world have given us.
What we have seen and heard is not little, sometimes directly, sometimes through the words and the gaze of others.
The rage that we felt and the dignity that we found was so great that now we think we are smaller than what we thought before.
In Mexico and in the five continents we have found what we sensed we would when we began our sixth step: there is another world, there is another path.
If the catastrophe that is coming is to be avoided and humanity is to have another chance, it will be because these others, down here and on the left, have not only resisted, but are already sketching the outline of something else.
Something different from what is going on up there.
In the impossible geometry of political power, the fundamentalisms are distributed evenly: the right wing becomes ultra-right and the institutional left wing becomes the impossible cultured right wing. Those who make up the progressive media complain that the fanatics on the mainstream press censure them, twist their words and slander their leader. But they at the same time censure, twist the words, slander, and remain silent before any movement that hasn’t bowed down to the dictates of their ringleaders. And without shame they condemn and acquit to the rhythm of a senseless media rating. Fanatics on one and other side fight over lies dressed as truths and crimes are gauged according to the media time they occupy. But this is nothing more than a pale reflection of what is happening in politics.
Weariness in the face of cynicism and incompetence on behalf of the traditional political classes has been turning into rage. Sometimes this rage still hopes for change following the usual paths and places, and it crashes head-on either with the disappointment which immobilizes it or an arbitrary force which tramples it. The unsettled and brutal North goes back to its old ways. When it is not sponsoring electoral fraud (as in Mexico), it is promoting, encouraging, and financing state coups (as now attempted in Bolivia and Venezuela). War continues to be its primary and favored form of international diplomacy. Iraq and Afghanistan burn, but, to the despair of those up there, they are not consumed.
The impositions of hegemony and homogeneity on a global scale find their witches’ apprentices in nations, in regions, and in small localities, which rehearse the impossible historic return to a past where fanaticism was law and dogma, science. Meanwhile, the governing political classes have found in the world of bright lights an adequate disguise to hide their full participation in organized crime.
Sickened by so much greed, the planet begins to pay the unpayable bill of its destruction. But “natural” disasters are also class issues and the devastation is felt most by those who have nothing and are no one. Faced with this, the stupidity of Power has no limits: millions and millions of dollars are dedicated to the manufacture of new weapons and installation of more military bases. The power of capital does not worry about training teachers, doctors, engineers, but rather soldiers. It doesn’t prepare constructors, but rather destructors.
And those who oppose this are pursued, incarcerated, murdered.
In Mexico, farmers who have defended their land are in prison (San Salvador Atenco); in Italy those who opposed the installation of military bases are pursued and treated as terrorists; in the France of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”, humans are only free, equal, and brothers if their papers say so; in Greece being young is a vice that must be eradicated; again in Mexico, but now in that city of the same name, young people are criminalized and murdered and nothing is done because it is not on the agenda dictated by those up there. Meanwhile, a legitimate referendum is converted into a shameful way for an assassin-governor to wash his hands off a situation. In the Spain of the modern European Union, publications are closed and a language, Euskera, is criminalized —they think that by killing the word they can kill those who speak it—; in that Asia that is so close, the demands of the peasants are met with armored nonsense; in that arrogant American Union, born of immigrant blood, the “other colors” who work there are pursued and killed; in the long wound that is Latin America, the brown blood that sustains it, is despised and humiliated; in the rebellious Caribbean, a people, the Cuban people, have to add up to the disgrace of a natural hazard that of an imperial embargo that is nothing other than an unpunished crime.
And in all of the corners of the world’s geography, and in all of the days of its calendars, those who work, those who make things run, are plundered, despised, exploited, repressed.
But sometimes, many times, as many times that a smile sets off, that rage looks for its own paths, new paths, other paths. And the “no” that they raise now not only resists, but begins to propose, to propose itself.
Since our public appearance, now almost 15 years ago, it has been our goal to be a bridge on which rebellions can walk back and forth.
Sometimes we have achieved this, sometimes we haven’t.
Now we see and we feel not only the rebellious resistance that, as sister and compañera, stays at our side and encourages our steps.
Now there is something that wasn’t there before, or that we hadn’t been able to see.
There is a creative rage.
A rage that paints all of the colors of the paths down below and on the left on the five continents….
III.
FOR THESE REASONS, AND AS PART OF THE ACTS COMMEMMORATING THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF THE ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION, THE 15 YEARS SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR AGAINST OBLIVION, THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE JUNTAS DE BUEN GOBIERNO (GOOD GOVERNMENT COUNCILS), AND THE THIRD YEAR OF THE OTHER CAMPAIGN AND THE ZEZTA INTERNAZIONAL, THE MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND ELDERLY OF THE EZLN CONVOKE ALL OF THE REBELLIOUS OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD TO THE:
FIRST GLOBAL “FESTIVAL DE LA DIGNA RABIA”
WITH THE THEME:
ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER PATH: DOWN HERE AND ON THE LEFT
TO BE HELD AT THE FOLLOWING VENUES AND ON THE FOLLOWING DATES
– THE OTHER MEXICO CITY, FEDERAL DISTRICT, December 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th, 2008. IN LIENZO CHARRO DE LA ASOCIACIÓN LOS CHARROS REYES DE IZTAPALAPA, Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente-UNOPII, Avenida Guelatao # 50, Colonia Álvaro Obregón, Delegación Iztapalapa, close to Guelatao metro station, where an exposition will be held. AND IN THE HEADQUARTERS OF UNÍOS, Dr. Carmona y Valle street #32, colonia Doctores, close to Cuauhtemoc metro station, where other activities will be held.
– CARACOL OF OVENTIC, CHIAPAS, home of the Junta de Buen Gobierno CORAZÓN CÉNTRICO DE LOS ZAPATISTAS DELANTE DEL MUNDO, December 31st 2008, January 1st 2009
– THE CITY OF SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS, IN CIDECI, located on the Camino Real de San Juan Chamula s/n, Colonia Nueva Maravilla. January 2nd, 3rd, 4th.
SOME OF THE SUBTHEMES OF THE FESTIVAL WILL BE:
ANOTHER COUNTRYSIDE
ANOTHER CITY
ANOTHER COMMUNICATION
ANOTHER ART AND ANOTHER CULTURE
ANOTHER POLITICS
ANOTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENT
ANOTHER HISTORY
ANOTHER SEXUALITY
THE FESTIVAL “ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER PATH: DOWN HERE AND ON THE LEFT” WILL HAVE THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERISTICS:
1. In Mexico City, a national and international exposition will be installed where every struggle, every experience, every rage, will have a space where it can set up a stand and show its struggle and its rage. This way we can all see, hear, and know them.
2. In zapatista territory, dignity and rage will become art and culture, music and song, because it’s also possible to dance to the tune of rebellion. And with words, pain will become hope.
3. In San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the word will go back and forth in order to give birth to new words and give strength and reason to rage.
4. The national and international groups, collectives, and organizations that participate in the festival will be only those who are invited to do so. To this end, the Sixth Commission of the EZLN has started to consult other political and social organizations, as well as groups and collectives of anarchists, libertarians, alternative communication, art and culture, defense of human rights, sexworkers, intellectual social activists, ex political prisoners, all adherents of the Sixth Declaration; and with groups, collectives, and organizations of other countries, all part of the Zezta Internazional. The criteria for invitations and participations will be made after these consultations.
5. For the roundtables and conferences, the EZLN will invite social organizers, thinkers, and leaders of anticapitalist projects from Mexico and around the world. The list of invitees will be released later on.
6. More details regarding what we think the “Festival de la Digna Rabia” will be like, will be announced in due time (that is, when we have an approximate idea of the problem we have gotten ourselves and yourselves into).
That’s all for now.
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ATENCO!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, September of 2008.
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Denuncias
Actividades
Caminando
En el Mundo
Red nacional contra la represión y por la solidaridad
Traduce este mensaje para soportar la lucha porfavor. No escribo en español muy bien. I understand El Sup’s words better when they are translated into English. Thank you, el Kilombo Intergaláctico, kindly for your service. I live here in the United States among those of the far right and the far left. I am neither and no where in between and often feel outside of it all. Rage? I have none. Nor expectations or demands. But I dream. My campaign is love for my life and for my brothers and sisters across the planet. Mahatma Gandhi, that wise soul and patient leader who brought independence to his people through faith and non-violence, once said, «Be the change you wish to see in the world.» And so I am. I have faith in a better world to come. I dream about it, and it manifests for me. It always has. This is what I teach. «El gran poder mundial no ha encontrado aún el arma para destruir los sueños,» dijo El Sup. Sueña y créa y enseña. Somos los soñadores que hacer la realidad. Peace, love, namaste, Cristina
Comentario de Cristina Maria — septiembre 19, 2008 @ 9:18 am
Para todos ustedes, mis hermanos
Con lágrimas en mis ojos y con una gran esperanza en mi corazón espero que esta carta sea leído por ustedes.
Mi nombre es Ana Benitez, tengo 24 años y son la mayor en mi familia. Como muchas familias Latinoamericanas, nuestra situación económica no ha sido buena, mis padre han luchado muy duro por nostros, por daros una educación. Pero gracias a todo el sistema corrupto, mi padre fue despedido de su trabajo muchos años atrás. En vista de no poder mas con las deudas, mi padre decidió venir a los Estados Unidos por el famoso “sueño Americano” . Estuvo seis años trabajando aqui en un restaurant, que a oidos de nosotros solo nos llegaba noticias buenas de parte de él. Pero cuando crecí y tome conciencia decidí venir por él, y cuando llegué todo era diferente como él nos contaba. El siempre nos contaba lo bueno por teléfono, pero la realidad es tan diferente. La forma en como él vivía, con tantos inmigrantes en un solo lugar. La forma en como su jefe no le respetaba NADA, por la simple razón de no tener papeles. De como los inmigrantes no tienen voz, porque tienen miedo a la deportación.
Todo eso lo vi y no podia dejarlo a él aqui, prefiero ser yo la que trabaje por ellos, mis padres ya hicieron mucho por mi y mis hermanos.
Un año casi desde que estoy trabajando aqui, lo único positivo son mis hermanos inmigrantes, porque de todo lo demás estoy ya cansada de ver como la gente aquí no HABRE LOS OJOS… he encontrado algunos si, pero escasos son los que se dan cuenta de lo que el Imperialismo, el Capitalismo, El Neoliberalismo, representa…
No tengo dinero es verdad, todo lo que he logrado lo he mandado a mi familia para pagar una operación de cerebro que le realizaron a mi padre. Pero eso no va a impedir que luche por conseguir realizar el proyecto que estado trabajando desde que un día entre en depression por esta soledad.
Soy mestiza Ecuatoriana que con orgullo tengo sangre indígena, y se que es hora de luchar, es hora de hacernos conocer, es hora de que el mundo conozca nuestra historia, nuestra riqueza cultural, nuestros valores. Es hora de levantarnos, de gritar, de unirnos ya que nosotros los pueblos indígenas si abriéramos los ojos podríamos lograr una gran revolución, un Nuevo amanecer para todos, para nuestra madre naturaleza, para la Pachamama.
En todo este proceso ustedes LOS ZAPATISTAS han sido mi luz en estas sombras.
Mi propuesta es la realización de un documental o una serie de documentales, recorriendo de norte a sur en nuestro continente Americano, por todas las comunidades indígenas y pueblos en resistencia ante esta crisis llamada Neoliberalismo.
– Este es nuestro continente, nosotros no podemos ser ilegales en nuestra propia tierra, por esta razón presentar toda la injusticia que se comete y se ha cometido desde la época de la Conquista con nuestros hermanos.
– Exhibir las causas de la migración y las consecuencias que ésta conlleva, como el quebrantamiento de la estructura familiar, el abandono de las tierras (sabiduría que por años ha sido nuestra herencia), la pérdida de identidad y cultura, entre otros.
– Frente a esta sociedad que cada día hace que el individualismo sea parte importante de la vida diaria, presentar como todavía en nuestros pueblos existe la comunidad, y el cómo el pensar colectivamente cambiaría el futuro.
– Dar a conocer toda la sabiduría que nuestros pueblos indígenas poseen, como en el campo de la medicina y la utilización de las plantas para curar enfermedades. En el campo de la utilización de la tierra para la cosecha y en la cría de animales, etc. De tal manera los indígenas son pues quienes son los principales protectores del Medio Ambiente. (La madre tierra es la que nos ha dado de comer y tenemos que defenderla como de lugar.)
– Conocer sus festividades, sus trajes típicos, su comida, su danza, sus tradiciones.
Gracias a los medios audiovisuales podemos llevar nuestra voz a muchos lugares del mundo, pero mi objetivo no es solamente que personas de otras naciones nos conozcan, mi objetivo principal es que nosotros mismos nos conozcamos y poder decir con orgullo: QUE ES LO QUE SOMOS. Que somos indígenas o mestizos o latinoamericanos o hispanos (palabra muchas veces utilizada por los supuestos raza superior para dirigirse a nosotros de una manera de humillación.)
Mi propuesta es una propuesta de rechazo hacia las injusticias.
Solo espero que mi carta sea leía por las personas que estén interesadas y con una gran alegría espero que esta carta sea leía por el Subcomandante Marcos.
Por ahora estoy sola en este proyecto pero estoy tocando puertas para que otras personas se unan a esta lucha, para conseguir ayuda económica que es una de las partes fundamentales.
Solamente mi petición sería poder ir a este encuentro para hacer tomas para mi documental, ya que las comunidades indígenas zapatistas son el mejor ejempo de resistencia.
Comentario de Ana Benitez — septiembre 19, 2008 @ 11:31 am
Compañeros, nose mucho ingles , pero intento entenderlo.
Gracias por la información, todo el apoyo que pueda brindarles.
Ojala pueda asistir al festival.
¡¡¡ VIVA LA DIGNIDAD !!!!!!!!!!
Comentario de NORMA — septiembre 19, 2008 @ 10:38 pm
I have recently started to learn and follow the EZLN and learning about neoliberalism and how devastating it is. I was one of those living a comfortable life in the US and not wanting to find out the atrocities committed in the rest of the world. Now my eyes are open and I can’t deny what I know. I have changed my ways and done small things like buying fair trade coffee, Zapatista crafts and such. My dream is to be able to show the rest of the world who like me, are still blind, the despair caused by globalization. To do this I am writing a novel. It is fast paced, reads like a thriller and introduces the Zapatistas, their struggle and the injustices perpetrated against the indigenous people of Mexico (and most of the world for that matter). I am quoting the commandantes and Marcos often but I would also like to take advantage of the mysteriousness and appeal of the subcomandante Marcos persona to drive the point I want to make. I would like subcomandante Marcos’ permission to use him fictitiously in my novel. I will do my best to promote the book so it will sell around the world, and if it does I want to use part of the proceeds to help develop women’s businesses and education for all. Plese let me know if I can do this.
THANKS
Comentario de Miriam Attias. — octubre 23, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
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