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Let’s suppose, without conceding…

Let’s suppose, without conceding…

August 2024.

Let’s suppose, without conceding, that you can imagine the following:

You were born as part of an indigenous people.  In a community, you acquired its language, its culture, its way.  All of this makes you different.  For official anthropology, your language is a “dialect” and your people are an “ethnicity.”  You are what progressives call “an Indian.”  Your skin color doesn’t matter, because as soon as you start to say something, you will notice the gesture of contempt from your non-indigenous interlocutor.  You will also see how that person instinctively puts his hand in his pocket to give you a coin.  That person will assume that you are inferior, ignorant, dirty, poor, superstitious, manipulable… and stupid.  But, ni modos, it doesn’t matter, that was your lot.  No matter what you do, nothing will change the other’s attitude.  Just as one is culturally indigenous, one is also culturally racist, even if it is “cool” racism.

Now let’s suppose, without conceding, that your indigenous community, your language, your culture, your way, is the Cho’ol, a people of Mayan roots, who live in the southeastern Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche.

Let’s suppose, without conceding, that, like all indigenous peoples, you have suffered contempt, racism, injustice, beatings, deception, and ridicule – in addition, of course, to forced disappearances, imprisonment, rape, and murder -, just for being who you are: an indigenous Cho’ol.

Let’s suppose, without conceding, that you know that a part of the indigenous peoples in Chiapas, including the Cho’ol people, are part of an organization called ezetaelene (also known as “the Zapatistas of Chiapas” or “neozapatistas”, or “transgressors of the law” or whatever is fashionable at the time), who took up arms on January 1, 1994, in what they called “the beginning of the war against oblivion,” and thus ended the plan of Carlos Salinas de Gortari of a transexenal Power (before it was the Salinista wet dream, as now it is of Morenism).

Let’s suppose, without conceding, that you are not an anthropologist nor an official historiographer, that is, someone who knows that, for centuries, indigenous peoples have been treated by modernity (in different but similar governments and stages) with a mixture of disgust and foreign pity.  And who knows that these natives exist, live, and fight somewhere not to be found in books, museums, tourist destinations, crafts, and government speeches.

Let us suppose, without conceding, that you know that these Zapatista peoples are in rebellion and resistance because they have embarked on the path of a terrible and wonderful construction: another world, one where all worlds have a place.

Let’s suppose, without conceding, that you, as a Cho’ol, had the bad luck to be born and live near the estate of a powerful person.

Let’s suppose, without conceding, that your name, or gracia, is José Díaz Gómez, and you are a prisoner in jail in Chiapas accused of being a cho’ol and of… being a Zapatista.

Now, switching channels, let’s suppose that you could have access to what is said in courts, police stations, and prisons in Chiapas.  Not without grief, you hear the following: “He is a Zapatista, one of those who criticize and do not support the president.”  “The boss will be happy that we punish one of the conservatives who refuse to be saved by modernity and progress (that is, the 4T)”

Now, let’s suppose, without conceding, that your freedom, as a cho’ol and Zapatista, depends on multiple factors: the judge’s mood that day, the public ministry, the police, the other finqueros (that is, in addition to the one who has his finca at Palenque), the little gray men’s desire to ingratiate themselves with bosses who do not even know they exist.

Suppose that you know that a non-governmental organization that defends human rights (of those so vilified by the Supreme Court – along with paid media workers) – has proven your innocence, and the accusing party cannot even present the minimal evidence against your freedom – and that of your two compañeros who are also persecuted.  But it is useless because you are not innocent of the two crimes for which you have been imprisoned for almost two years now: being Indigenous and being a Zapatista.

Now, let’s suppose, without conceding, that you, at the same time, go to the zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, and contemplate an iron and papier-mâché structure supposed to be, without conceding, a replica of one of the pyramids of the Mayan people.

Let’s suppose, without conceding, that you then ponder and conclude that this is what indigenism looks like in Mexico: a simulation in papier-mâché stone that pays homage to a past that is distant (and manipulable in official historiography), and thousands of injustices “administered” by the government in turn, against Indigenous peoples in the present.  For governments, indigenous peoples are the raw material for their factory of “historical” alibis… and culprits.

Now, let us suppose, without conceding, that you have been commissioned – given your ability and, above all, because you are not a Zapatista cho’ol – to give a master lecture at the Party’s cadre school, called «The revolution of consciences in the Fourth Transformation.”

Would you feel bad? At least uncomfortable? Out of place?

Or, like most of your coreligionists, would you say “it’s all for the good of the movement and so that the extreme right doesn’t return”, “the Zapatistas had their moment, but they are no longer fashionable”?

So you could conclude that, if you were not indigenous, if you were not a Zapatista, and if you were not critical of the government in power, you would be free and would not have wasted two years of your life?

Of course, all this assumes, without conceding, that you have imagination, sensitivity, and a sense of justice.

And, of course, you are not a scoundrel. Or a scoundrel, (don’t forget gender parity).

Okay. Cheers and stop looking up, the fight for life is down below.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain.
August 2024.

P.S.- “Modern” justice systems cannot be reformed. They are based on an assumption that is daily refuted by reality: “all people are equal before the law.” And this is not true, because “whoever pays makes the rules.”

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