On the topic: The Storm and the Day After Part ten: HEALTH ACCORDING TO DOÑA JUANITA.

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On the topic: The Storm and the Day After Part ten: HEALTH ACCORDING TO DOÑA JUANITA.

On the topic: The Storm and the Day After

Part ten: HEALTH ACCORDING TO DOÑA JUANITA.

Today is not the day after. Doña Juanita grinds the corn that will later be a new tortilla on the table where, after practice, the promoters will eat. Doña Juanita confesses to me that, when it comes to distributing food, she serves more to the health promoters. Because they are healers, she says, and they need more strength so that their head can learn and teach.

We talk. Rather, she speaks and I listen. She tells of a distant land that is just there, on the other side of the mountain range that extends its skirt on our soil; our land that once belonged to strangers, those from outside, those of money and death; soil that was made free by our struggle.

Doña Juanita is happy with the struggle. Telling stories from the past, when the landowner farmer and the government ruled, she encourages her granddaughters, exhorts them, warns them: “Never give up the struggle, find your place and fight to defend it. If you lose it, our dead will have died for nothing and they will come and pull your hair out. And I’m going to kick you. Even if I am dead, I will come at night.”

“The system only taught us how to die badly,” she says while stoking the stove. “And the struggle taught us how to live. It is difficult to follow the path of death, but even more difficult to walk life. But the struggle is happier, because it makes you look far away. For example, towards health. Before, disease only ended with death, and our medicine only delayed a little when we died. Now there are many forms of health. Starting from the bottom, just like the way we build a “champa”. Well, that’s what I think. That’s what my head says. That is why it is good for young women to learn about health. Because that path is long and it is about life. But not just medicinal plants, because even I know about that. It’s about new things, about laboratories and those strange devices that hear what your gut is saying. To open a brother’s belly, take out the evil and mend it like a skirt is mended. I think the farmer wanted us sick so that we would die quickly and we wouldn’t be bothering. In any case, the big boss brings people from somewhere else to serve him. The struggle is good because it is not just about killing or dying, it is about living. I want to see that thing about them putting a knife into a Christian, but a good knife because it doesn’t kill, but rather heals. The thing with health is that it is something else. I think that’s why you don’t say it when you’re sick. It’s not because you’re brave and you don’t want to make a fuss. It’s because you’re afraid of the knife that heals. Imagine that you see in your eye how the machete reaches your belly. “Oh my god!” says Doña Juanita as she crosses herself repeatedly.

Doña Juanita checks the beans. She tells me that, in that other land, which is close – although far away – live brothers who call those lands “Palestine”. She says that destruction and death continue to spread there, although now another war in another geography is the news that hides their news. Doña Juanita does not cry when she speaks “Palestina”. Her gaze shines, yes, but there is no shame. There is rage, anger, shame.

“I don’t know, but I imagine that everyone wants to tell those people what they should do. This is how it was with our communities; people came to order us what we should think, dress, eat, pray, they even want to tell us how to speak. The Big Boss does not always arrive with the face of a farmer. Sometimes he comes with the face of a good person, who comes to help you, who gives you his alms, who caresses you. But what he wants is to command. If we hadn’t fought, today we would be the same, living a life that is not ours.

We would not be conscious of ourselves and we would be what the eyes of others want us to be. That does not work, because they only leave death for you. Your life is the life they say and not yours. The struggle is good because it does not command, but obeys.”

Doña Juanita sighs. She piles up the tortillas and the memories, and tells me a story that her grandmother told her 30, 50, 100, a thousand years ago. Doña Juanita is already old, but she is a child again when she repeats the story that her grandmother brought for her from her earlier ones:

“After the beginning, the beings that began to speak, and thus walk, fought a lot. They wanted to have. He who had little, wanted a lot. He who had nothing, wanted to have. Even if it’s a little. He who had a lot, wanted to have it all. It wasn’t their way per se. That way was brought by the one who is the color of money, the one with fierce eyes and hands of death, the Dzul. The previous ones suffered a lot. And they fought a lot among themselves. And with the fights, came diseases for everyone: for the babies, for the mothers, for the fathers, for the fields, for the animals. The plants also became sick and the waters and the skies became sick. Before money, there was health and the disease of wanting to have more did not exist. There was the common.

The Dzules, the foreigners, those from outside, taught our people that, to dominate a town, you had to dominate women. And if they resisted and didn’t let them, they had to be killed. Because by killing women, the Dzules said, they killed future rebellions.

But the women were more knowledgeable, older in age and rank. Ixchel is her name and her job is the health of everything. During the day she hides, but at night she keeps watch to see if everything is okay. She is the moon, the Ixchel.

To women who fight, Ixchel gave them the inner strength of heart and body. She made their heart great so that the seed of life could fit in it. That is why the oppressor’s wars seek to harm the women who fight. They are attacked even as little girls. Because life is in them, tomorrow is in them. She made them rebels. Non conformant. She made them wise. She made them with a distant view. They see life beyond where others only see death. And when Ixchel gets angry, then, well, forget about little machos and bossy men. That is why our work as women is resistance and rebellion. Because only in this way can a land stained with bombs, industries and machines be healed. Only then can you cure death. Only fighting.”

-*-

Now I realize that Doña Juanita, when she says “Palestina,” she also means “girl, woman, old woman.” And that is why Doña Juanita, who was and is a child, woman and old woman, when she speaks “Palestina” she says “rage”, yes, but she also says “tomorrow”.

And that is what we Zapatista communities say when we say “Palestine.”

Well, then. Health and well that: health.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast, almost on the corner of the Middle East.