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AS THE WOMEN WE ARE. Zapatista Indigenous Women

AS THE WOMEN WE ARE.
Zapatista Indigenous Women.

 
Images of the Zapatista Terci@s Compas

To the indigenous teachers of the CNTE.

In the audio of this video, you can hear a poem, in native Mayan language, was presented at the art gathering «RebelArte and RevelArte» in April 2025. The poem presented by the three young Zapatista women from Caracol Jacinto Canek is called «I Am a Woman» or «I Am an Indigenous Woman,» and was created through prior research into what is discussed among the groups ‘as the women we are’ in that area. The poem was written by the education promoters of that area who, working in common, came up with the idea. They spoke, but above all, they listened to older women (of sound judgment, as we say here), their grandmothers and great-grandmothers; they spoke with their mothers and older sisters; and they looked at themselves in the mirror of their current status as young Zapatista women. Then they looked for someone to be the presenter, and those young women embraced it. The video shows images of the Herbalism, Midwifery, Bone-Setting, and General Health courses, as well as progress on the construction of the operating room and bicycle workshop, with the participation of compañera Zapatista women.

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The translation by the compas of that puy, would go something like this:

«I am an indigenous woman / encountering problems / in my gaze you can see the glimmer of sadness / with every step I take, there is a trace, a mark / of the wounds that have been inflicted on me, that have hurt me / by men and capitalism. It’s not like being a rich woman / it’s rather different / rich women look at me with disdain too / so do men. I dressed the way they wanted / to forget that I am the woman that I am / the eye of man / turned me into a thing / that I’m worthless / that I’m less / that I’m weak, without strength / so that I would be very unhappy / that’s how I learned that life is shit / suffering led me to hate my body / to hate what I am / to forget that I am beautiful, gorgeous / that entered my head. The word Zapatista became / like my best friend / or my salvation / today is my beginning / because I learned / to love myself as I am / and to love my being a woman / I learned that I wasn’t born / to serve neither to please man / nor to obey anyone / but I was born to want and love myself / as the woman that I am / and I will not be happy until they stop exploiting me. Today I celebrate being the woman that I am / for my courage / for my strength / because I have understood that I am a true woman. From now on I will be a woman / with a firm step / determined to fight for life. My brave heart / beats strongly because it’s free / my heart, courage and strength / will help me be free / with the butterfly / it will continue forward / with my fighting spirit.”

But every female ear, another poem.

Other Tzeltal-speaking compañeras, but from other areas (Tzeltal varies from one area to another), explain: “What the poem says is that she was sad, that she couldn’t get through the day, that the rich despise her for being a woman, and that rich women treat her like a thing, not a person. In other words, being a rich woman isn’t the same as being a poor woman. And being a woman from the city isn’t the same as being an Indigenous woman. The men in her town are the same as what we call machista.

So, out of pure sadness, she learned to hate herself; that’s how it got to her head, that she hates her own body and even forgot that she’s pretty. And then the struggle came, and there she learned that there’s no choice but to fight, and now she’s learning other things and jobs. And her heart is happy that she has value, and that she is beautiful, and that she has strength and courage, and that’s why she has value as a woman. I think that poem was written by a compañera. A Zapatista, ‘pues’.”

Maybe it is not very clear, but when they end their performance with «Long live women!» they also shout, we shout, «Long live Palestinian women!»

For now, that’s all we say and all we see as the women we are.

From the mountains of southeastern Mexico.
Indigenous Zapatista women.
June 2025.

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