October 1, 2020
By Sergio Rodriguez
Today, our compañero and friend Jean Robert died. Someone who, despite his modesty, was unsuccessful at hiding his great wisdom.
But Jean was first and foremost a good man, someone you felt good to be around, someone who knew how to listen and was always ready to smile.
But it is impossible to understand Jean’s way of being without recognizing the importance of Sylvia Marcos, with whom he shared many decades of his life. She was not his mate; they were and they are compañer@s.
I want to publish a few words that Jean delivered in one of the many seminars that he was invited to attend by the Maya peoples of the EZLN:
“The Zapatistas are not separatists. They constitute a unique movement, since their horizon is the world,” a friend who knows them well said to me, adding: “a world that, for those who free themselves from their scales, is proportional.
“This proportionality is reflected in the caracoles, the autonomous councils of the Zapatista people, which break with the great pyramid scheme of the colonial, neo-colonial, and capitalist order.
“I’m convinced that we’re here in the right place to think beyond the single thought that is called capitalism. I think we’re in the territory where the unthinkable has already begun to be thought.
“Here, the rediscovery of the relationship between territory, dignity and courage does not come from external or state definitions of identity but from one’s own inner need, which is also the desire to continue being what one is. From the left and from below, but above all, from within.
“Because this meeting is sponsored by people who know better than anyone what is the right proportion between respect for tradition and the need for change, between attachment to one’s being and openness to the other, the living force of tradition here is Mesoamerican and, needless to say, from the South.”
The same friend: “This living force is latent in the peoples of the deep South. It manifests while avoiding intoxication or staying detoxified. What animates them is a spirituality antagonistic to modernity and its fashions. A spirituality that is found, for example, among the women of Chiapas…”
Today is a very sad day for those of us who had the opportunity to talk with him, listen to him, share some lectures, eat with him, walk with him. A big hug for our dear Sylvia. Let the earth be light upon him.
Translation by Sexta Grietas del Norte. Original Spanish published in by Pozol Colectivo