ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO.
June 2011.
“Pain reminds us
That we can be good,
That someone better inhabits us,
That the river of tears runs a noble current.
Pain we call the underside of the leaf of laughter,
The darkness on the other side of the star
That on your forehead has its placid name
And orients our steps from day to day.
Pain is the fuel with which burns
The flame of remembrance that illuminates
A night of forgetting is defeated
By the ray of your laughter falling away
Pain is the name of the grief
Of living for your memory.”
Fragment of “49 Balloons”.
Juan Carlos Mijangos Noh.
To: The June 5 Citizens Movement for Justice, to the relatives of the boys and girls killed and injured in the ABC Daycare on June 5, 2009, to all those in solidarity with their movement.
Hermosillo, Sonora, México.
From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Chiapas, México.
I write you in the name of all of the women, men, elders, and children of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, to send you greetings and voice our respect and admiration for your dignified struggle.
It is not easy to put pain into words, this we know.
And rage?
And the knowledge that the bad governments purposely ignore demands for justice?
And seeing how [the bad government] manipulates the calendar to simulate justice, calculating how forgetting will bury death? That absurd death of 49 little ones and the dozens of injured, children without more fault than having been born in a country where the government has united nepotism with corruption and impunity.
Little or nothing can we add to the dignified words already said about what happened: the tragedy brought to those who neither expected nor deserved it; the irresponsibility with which it was treated; the complicity of governments, legislators, and judges; the continued postponement of a real investigation. And the names and images of the little girls and boys, the activities and mobilizations to honor them—that is, by punishing those responsible, justice for the victims, and the adoption of measures that prevent such a tragedy from being repeated.
All of this and more we have learned from your webpage www.movimiento5dejunio.org, and the book “We are the guilty” by Diego Enrique Osorno, that puts together the jigsaw puzzle of the tragedy.
The death of a child is always disproportionate. It knocks over everything in its path and destroys everything around it. But when that death is seeded and cultivated through the negligence and irresponsibility of governments that have converted ineptitude into a business, something very profound shakes the collective heart that from below drives the heavy wheel of history.
Thus the questions grow and expand: why? who is responsible? what is being done so that such a tragedy never again occurs?
It is your effort and endeavor that has given us the answers. Because from above we have only seen disdain, mockery, simulations, and lies.
Lies are always an insult, but when they are woven by Power to protect its relatives and friends, this is villainy.
There above they have not repented. They will not. Instead of honoring the dead children in the only way possible, that is, with justice, they continue in their war games where they win and everyone loses.
Because what is preached from above is not resignation in the face of death. What they want rather is conformity with the irresponsibility that burned and injured those lives.
Far away as we are, in calendar and geography, we do not send words of conformity or of resignation. Not only because neither of these can confront the consequences of this crime that happened two years ago, but because, and above all, your struggle elicits our respect and admiration for your cause, your path, and your effort.
There above they should know that it is not only pain that unites, but also the example of stubborn struggle animated by that pain.
Because you, men and women brought by tragedy into this struggle, are extraordinary beings that awake hope in many corners of our country and our planet.
Extraordinary are those men and women who have begun to walk again, in the Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, to remind the bad government, the criminals, and the entire country that it is shameful to do nothing when war is taking over everything.
From one of these corners, from the indigenous lands of Chiapas, we the Zapatistas watch you from below, knowing that pain also expands one’s steps if these steps are dignified.
These lines that we write you now are animated by the desire to say just one thing:
Good is the blood that gave life to those little girls and boys, and cursed be that which has taken them.
And to say to you that you can count on us, that, although we are small and far away, we recognize the greatness of those who know that justice is only achieved with memory and never with resignation.
We hope that some day you can come to our lands. Here you will find a brown heart that will embrace you, attentive ears to listen to you, and a history willing to learn from you.
Because great lessons, those that change the path of history, come precisely from people who, like you and those who now walk with you, make of memory a path on which to grow.
With you, and those who now march, we can together—you, they, us—speak words that hold pain as a scar that reminds us and commits us to never allow such a tragedy to be repeated, and that finally end the bloody carnival with which above they celebrate impunity and shamelessness.
While this occurs, from here we will continue listening to and learning from you.
Alright then. Health to you and may justice finally walk below.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, June 2011.
