Words of the Zapatista Peoples.
August 13, 2021.
Sisters, brothers, hermanoas:
Compañeros, compañeras, compañeroas:
Through our voices, the Zapatista communities speak.
First, we want to give thanks.
Thanks for having invited us.
Thanks for receiving us.
Thanks for hosting us.
Thanks for feeding us.
Thanks for taking care of us.
But above all, thank you that, despite your differences and contrarities, you have agreed on this that we do today. That perhaps seems little to you, but for us, the Zapatista Peoples, it is very big.
– * –
We are Zapatistas of Mayan roots.
We are from a geography called Mexico and we crossed the ocean to say these words to you, to be with you, to listen to you, to learn from you.
We are from Mexico and in you and with you we find endearment, care, respect.
The Mexican State and its governments do not recognize us as nationals of that geography. We are strangers, foreigners, undesirables, inconvenients in the same soils that were cultivated by our ancestors.
For the Mexican State we are “extemporaneous.” That is what our birth certificates say, which we managed to obtain after many expenses and trips from our villages to the offices of the bad government. And we did it to be able to reach you.
But we have not come this far to complain. Not even to denounce the bad government that we suffer.
We only tell you this because it is that bad government that has demanded of the Spanish State to apologize for what happened 500 years ago.
You should understand that, in addition to being shameless, the bad government of Mexico is also ignorant of history. And it twists and accommodates it at its convenience.
So let’s put aside the bad governments that each of us suffers in our geographies.
They are just overseers, obedient employees of a greater criminal.
– * –
Those of us who make up the Zapatista Maritime Squadron, and who are known as Squadron 421, are in front of you today, but we are only the precursor of a larger group. Up to 501 delegates. And we are 501 just to show the bad governments that we are ahead of them. While they simulate a false celebration of 500 years, we are already in what follows: life.
In the 501st year we will travel the corners of this unsubmissive land.
But don’t worry. The 501 delegates will not come in one go. They will arrive in parts.
Right now, in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast, the airborne Zapatista fleet that we call “The Extemporaneous” is preparing and is made up of Zapatista women, men, boys, and girls.
Accompanying this fleet in its travels will be a delegation from the National Indigenous Congress-Indigenous Governing Council and the Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land and Water.
All have suffered to get papers and vaccinations. They have gotten sick and have gotten well. They have felt hunger and have been away from their families, their communities, their land, their language, their culture.
But all are encouraged and enthusiastic to arrive and meet you. But not in large actions, but in places where you resist, rebel, struggle.
Perhaps to someone it might seem that we are interested in big actions and the media impact, which is how they value successes and failures.
But we have learned that seeds are exchanged, sown, and grown on a daily basis, in our respective soil, with the knowledge of each person.
Tomorrow is not born in the light. It is cultivated, cared for, and born in the unnoticed shadows of the early morning, when the night begins to cede terrain.
The earthquakes that shake the history of humanity begin with an isolated, almost imperceptible “enough is enough.” A discordant note in the middle of the noise. A crack in the wall.
– * –
That is why we do not come to bring recipes, to impose visions and strategies, to promise luminous and instantaneous futures, filled plazas, immediate solutions. Nor did we come to summon you to marvelous unions.
We come to listen to you.
It won’t be easy, it’s true.
We are so different, so distinct, so distant, so contrary, and, above all, so contradictory.
Many things separate us.
Perhaps, when we speak, whether we want to or not, we not only tell our story, we also demonstrate the conviction that what is ours is what’s valuable, is what’s the truth.
Each gaze at the past divides us. And that difference is not for nothing. In each gaze there is rage and pain that legitimately peek into the anterior.
It is true that gazing at past history we seek to find what we want. Be it rage, anger, convictions, or acquittals. Although there are serious and in-depth studies, we can look for the one that suits us, the one that proves us right. The one that justifies us. And we make it “truth.”
That way, we can judge and condemn. But justice remains forgotten.
And that way, we can find many things that divide and confront us.
We have beefs in our family, in our group, collective, organization. In our neighborhood. In our region. In our geography.
Each one has a pain that marks them. A rage that moves them.
And those pains and those rages, which are not few, are there.
And the Zapatista Peoples say that only a greater threat, a more terrible pain, a greater rage, is what can make us agree to direct that rage and that pain upwards.
But it’s not that those differences that we have disappear, as in the false calls to “unity” that those from above tend to make when those below hold them accountable.
No, what we Zapatista communities talk about is a cause, a motive, a goal: life.
It is not about abandoning convictions and struggles. On the contrary. We think that the struggles of women, otroas, workers, natives, not only should not stop, but should be deeper and more radical. Each one faces one or more heads of the Hydra.
Because all those struggles, of yours and of us Zapatista Peoples, are for life.
But as long as we do not destroy the monster in its heart, those heads will continue sprouting and changing shape but with greater cruelty.
– * –
Now, in these times, we watch and suffer a gigantic destruction; that of nature, with humanity included.
Because under the rubble, the ashes, the mud, the dirty waters, the pandemics, the exploitation, the contempt, the dispossession, the crime, the racism, and the intolerance, there are human beings without life. And each life is a story that becomes a number, a statistic, an oblivion.
The future, the history to come, is, like the present, a real nightmare. And, when we think that it cannot be worse, reality comes to hit us in the face.
And then each one sees for themself and, in the best of cases, for their close friends: their family, their friends, the people they know.
But, just as in every corner of the planet, in every beating heart, there is a misfortune present and another to come, there is also a resistance, a rebellion, a struggle for life.
Because living is not only not dying, it is not about surviving. Living as human beings is living with freedom. Living is art, it is science, it is joy, it is dance, it is struggle.
And of course, living is also disagreeing with one thing or another, arguing, debating, confronting.
Then there is someone or something that prevents us from living, that takes away our freedom, that deceives us, that swindles us, that corners us, that takes away each other’s world with bites, cuts, wounds.
There we can select the person responsible. Find a culprit. Confront them and do justice. Someone or something that pays, that is responsible for that pain that leaves us lonely. That corners us on an island that gets smaller and smaller, so tiny that only the self of each person remains.
And even there, on the small island, far from everything and everyone, they force us to be something else, not to be what we are. Our individual history that is part of a collective history: a room, a house, a neighborhood, a community, a geography, a cause that must be changed and betrayed to be part of something else.
A woman who is to the liking of the man. Unoa otroa to be accepted by the hetero. A youth to the satisfaction of maturity. An old age tolerated by youth. A childhood in dispute by young people, adults, the elderly. An efficient and docile workforce for the overseer. An overseer to the liking of the Boss.
And that pressure to transform into what we are not has the way of violence.
And it is structural. The whole system is built to impose the mold of normalcy.
If we are women, we must be so according to the mold of males.
If we are otroas, we must be so according to the mold of the heterosexual.
For example, you see that there even exist clinics to “correct” sexual difference.
Well, the system is a gigantic and brutal clinic that “cures” the “abnormality.” A machine that attacks, isolates and liquidates the other, the different.
So that’s how they have us, day and night, wanting to tame us, seeking to domesticate us.
And we, well we resist. All our life and entire generations resisting, rebelling. Saying “no” to imposition. Screaming “yes” to life.
It’s not new, it’s true. We could go back five centuries and it’s the same story.
And the ridiculous thing about all this is that those who oppress us now intend to take up the role of our “liberators.”
– * –
However, something is different. And it is that the pain of the earth, of nature, has also joined ours.
And here we may or may not agree. We can say it is not true, that pandemics will end, that catastrophes will cease, that the world, that our life in the world, will go back to how it was before. Even though that “before” was and is about pain, destruction, and injustice.
We, the Zapatista peoples, think not. Not only will it not be the same again; it’s going to get worse.
We Zapatista communities name the one responsible for these evils and we call it “capitalism.”
And we also say that only with the total destruction of that system will it be possible that each one, according to their way, their calendar, and their geography, will need to build something else.
Not perfect, but better.
And whatever is built, these new relationships between human beings and between humanity and nature, will be given whatever name each wants.
And we know that it will not be easy. It’s already not easy.
And we know well that we won’t be able to do it alone, each one in their plot fighting against the head of the hydra that they have to suffer, while the heart of the monster rebuilds and grows even more.
And above all we know that we will not have to look at that tomorrow in which, at last, the beast burns and is consumed until, of it, only a bad memory remains.
But we also know that we will do our part, even if it’s small, even if it’s forgotten by generations to come.
– * –
As Zapatista communities that we are, we see signs.
But maybe we are wrong as peoples that we are.
You see they say that we are ignorant, backward, conservative, opponents of progress, pre-modern, barbarian, uncivilized, inopportune, and inconvenient.
Maybe that’s so.
Perhaps we are backward because as women that we are or as otroas, we can go out for a walk without fear of being attacked, raped, dismembered, and disappeared.
Perhaps we are against progress because we are oppose megaprojects that destroy nature and destroy us as peoples, and that leave death for generations that follow to inherit.
Perhaps we are against modernity because we are opposed to a train, a highway, a dam, a thermoelectric plant, a shopping center, an airport, a mine, a deposit of toxic material, the destruction of a forest, the pollution of rivers and lagoons, the cult of fossil fuels.
Perhaps we are backwards because we honor the earth instead of money.
Perhaps we are barbarians because we grow our food. Because we work to live and not to earn pay.
Perhaps we are inopportune and inconvenient because we govern ourselves as the Peoples that we are. Because we consider the work of government as one more part of community work that we will have to fulfill.
Perhaps we are rebellious because we don’t sell out, because we don’t give up, because we don’t give in.
Perhaps we are all that they say about us.
– * –
But there is something we see, something we listen to, something we know is happening and will happen.
And that’s why we’re on this journey. Because we think and we know that we’re not the only ones who fight, that we’re not the only ones who see what’s happening and what’s going to happen.
Our corner of the world is a small geography of struggle for life.
We’re looking for other corners and we want to learn from them.
That’s why we came all the way here, not to bring you blame, insults, complaints, collections for unpaid debts.
Although it is fashionable and although anyone would say yes, that we’d be right in those demands or that we don’t know what we should do, and that they, the bad governments, will do it for us.
And that it be fashionable for those bad governments to hide behind cardboard nationalisms.
And that, under the banner of nationalism, we cover ourselves and also cover those who oppress us, those who persecute us, those who murder us, those who divide and confront us.
No. We did not come for that.
Behind nationalisms hide not only differences, but also and above all, crimes. Under the same nationalism, sheltered are the violent macho and the violated woman; heterosexual intolerance and persecuted otherness; predatory civilization and the annihilated original people; exploitive capital and subjugated workers; the rich and the poor.
National flags hide more than they show, much more.
Because we think this, it’s why our commitment to life is global. It doesn’t recognize borders, languages, colors, races, ideologies, religions, sexes, ages, sizes, flags.
This is why ours is a Journey for Life.
– * –
This is one of the few times we will take the word in an action where a few speak and many listen.
And we take advantage of it to make a respectful request.
Tell us your story. It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small.
Tell us your story of resistance, of rebellion. Your pains, your rages, your “no,” and your “yes”.
Because we Zapatista communities have come to listen and learn the history that exists in each room, in each house, in each neighborhood, in each community, in each language, in each way and in each oh well.
Because, after so many years, we have learned that in every dissent, in every rebellion, in every resistance, there is a cry for life.
And, according to us, the Zapatista peoples, that’s what it’s all about: life.
And one day when anyone asks you, “What did the Zapatistas come for?” together we can answer, without shame for you and without embarrassment for us, “They came to learn.”
500 years later, the Zapatista communities came to listen to us.
From Madrid, in the geography they call Spain,
And on these soils and under these skies renamed:
SLUMIL K´AJXEMK´OP, or “Unsubmissive Land”.
On behalf of the Zapatista communities.
The Zapatista Maritime Squadron, named “Squadron 421.”
Planet Earth. August 13, just 500 years later.