Dawn does not make haste in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. As if it were in no hurry, it takes delight in each and every corner, like a patient and dedicated lover. The fog knows no bounds, with its long dress of cloud, and it manages to smother the most determined light. It lays siege to it, it surrounds it with its snow-white wall, encircles it in a diffuse loop. From the middle of the sky, the moon is making its retreat. A column of smoke mingles with the mist, slowly, with the same languor with which the cloud wraps the scattered huts under the wide skirts of her petticoat. Everyone is sleeping. Everyone except the shadow. Everyone is dreaming. Especially the shadow. As soon as it extends its hand, it catches a question. What is the speed of dreams? I don't know. Perhaps it's...But no, I don't know... The truth is that was is known here is known collectively. We know, for example, that we are at war. And I'm not referring just to the real zapatista war, the one which has not totally satisfied the bloodthirstiness of some media and of some intellectuals "of the left." The ones who are so given, the first to the numbers of deaths, injured and disappeared, and the latter to translating deaths into errors "for not having done what I told them." It is not just that. I'm also speaking about what we call the "Fourth World War" which is being waged by neoliberalism and against humanity. The one which is talking place on all fronts and everywhere, including in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. As well as in Palestine and in Iraq, in Chechnya and in the Balkans, in Sudan and in Afghanistan, with more or less regular armies. The one which fundamentalism of both camps is carrying to all corners of the planet. The one which, taking on non-military forms, is claiming victims in Latin America, in Social Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in Oceania, in the Near East, with financial bombs that are causing entire nation states and international bodies to disappear into little pieces. This war which, according to us (and, I insist, tendentially), is attempting to destroy/depopulate lands, to rebuild/reorder local, regional and national maps, and to create, by blood and fire, a new world cartography. This one which is leaving its signature in its path: death. Perhaps the question "What is the speed of dreams?" should be accompanied by the question "What is the speed of nightmares?" Just a few weeks prior to the terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004 in Spain, a Mexican political journalist-analyst (one of those to whom they give a piece of candy and then they break into ridiculous praise) was lauding Jose Maria Aznar's vision "of the State." The analyst said that Aznar, by accompanying the United States and Great Britain in the war against Iraq, had gained promising ground for the expansion of the Spanish economy, and the only cost he had to pay was the repudiation by a "small" part of the Spanish population, "the radicals who are never lacking, even in a society as buoyant as the Spanish one," said the "analyst". He went on, noting that the only thing the Spanish had to do was to wait for a while until the reconstruction business of Iraq got underway, and then yes, they would be getting boatloads of money. In short, a dream. It didn't take long until reality demanded the real price for Aznar's "vision of the State." That morning of March 11 the fact that Iraq is not in Iraq came true. I mean Iraq is not only in Iraq, but in the entire world. In short, the Atocha station as a synonym for nightmare. But before the nightmare was the dream, but it was the neoliberal dream. The war against Iraq had been set in motion a good deal prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in US lands. In order to go back to that beginning, there is nothing like a photograph... Flat, reddish ground. It looks to be hard. Perhaps clay or something similar. A boot. Alone, without its mate. Abandoned. Without a foot to wear it. Some scattered pieces of rubble. The boot, in fact, looks like one more piece of rubble. It's all that there is in the image, and so it's the bottom of the picture which clarifies what Iraq is about. The date? September, 2004. One can't discern whether the boot is from someone who died, if it was abandoned in flight, or if it is just a discarded boot. Nor is it known if the boot belongs to a US or British soldier, or to a resistance fighter, to an Iraqi civilian or to a civilian from another country. Nonetheless, in spite of the lack of more information, the image presents an idea of what Bush's "postwar" Iraq is: violence, death, destruction, desolation, confusion, chaos. All of it a neoliberal program. If the false arguments that the war against Iraq was a war "against terrorism" have collapsed, the real reasons are now emerging, more than a year after Hussein's statue was pulled down, aided by the tanks of the US war, and a euphoric Bush erected another one to himself declaring an end to the war (Apparently the Iraqi resistance didn't listen to Bush's message: the number of US and British soldiers killed and injured has only increased since "the war ended", and now added to that are the losses of civilians from various nations.) Neo-conservative ideology in the United States has a dream: building a neoliberal "Disneyland." In place of a "village model", a reflection of the counterinsurgency manuals of the 60s, it has to do with building a "nation model." The land of ancient Babylon was then chosen. The dream of building an "example" of what the world should be (always according to the neoliberals) was fueled by "(...) the most prized belief of the ideological architects of the war (against Iraq): that greed is good. Not just good for them and their friends, but good for humanity and certainly good for the Iraqis. Greed creates profits, which create growth, which creates jobs, products and services and anything else which anyone could possibly need or want. "The role of a good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue bottomless greed, so that they can, in turn, satisfy the needs of society. "The problem is that governments, even neo-conservative governments, rarely have the opportunity to prove that their sacred theory is correct: despite their enormous ideological efforts, even George Bush's Republicans are, in their own minds, eternally sabotaged by meddling Democrats, stubborn unions and alarmist environmentalists. Iraq was going to change all this. The theory was finally going to be put into practice someplace on Earth in its most perfect and uncompromising form. "A country of 25 million inhabitants would not be rebuilt as it had been prior to the war: it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would appear a dazzling showroom for the laissez-faire politicians, an autopia like the world had never seen." ("Baghdad Year Zero. The Pillage of Iraq After a Neo-conservative Utopia", Naomi Klein in Harper's magazine, September 2004. Translation: Julio Fernandez Baralbar). Instead of that, Iraq is indeed an example, but an example of what is waiting for the entire world if the neoliberals win the great war, the Fourth World War: unemployment of almost 70%, industry and commerce paralyzed, an exorbitant increase in foreign debt, anti-explosion walls everywhere, the exponential growth of fundamentalism, civil war...and the exporting of terrorism to the entire planet. I'm not going to inundate you with something that appears in the news every day: military offensives by the coalition (in a war which has "already ended"), mobilization of the Iraqi resistance, attacks, attacks on military and civilian objectives, kidnappings, executions, new offenses by the coalition, new mobilization of the Iraqi resistance, etcetera. I'm sure you can find plenty of information in the press of the entire world. The best source in Spanish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, which has among its analysts some of the most serious and best informed on the issue of Iraq. The truth is we have already seen this video in other places...and we are continuing to see it: Chechnya, the Balkans, Palestine and Sudan are only examples of this war which destroys nations in order to try and "restructure" them into paradises...and they end up being turned into hells. An abandoned boot on the ground in "liberated" Iraq sums up the new world order: the destruction of nations, the obliteration of any trace of humanity, reconstruction as the chaotic reordering of the ruins of a civilization. There are, however, other boots, even if they are just a few... Broken boots. Worn-out boots. Yes, Insurgenta Erika's boots are worn-out. The sole is detached from the right toe, making the boot look like an unsatisfied mouth. The toes aren't visible yet, and so Erika doesn't seem to have realized that her boots, especially the right one, are worn-out. From the first days in the mountain, I made it my custom to look down.. Footwear is often one of the guerrillero's dreams/nightmares (others?: sugar, keeping your feet dry and other rather damp ones), since he devotes a good deal of his attention to it. Perhaps that's why one acquires that obsession of always looking at other people's feet. Insurgenta Erika has come to advise me that they've now finished editing the story of The Magical Orange (Radio Insurgente's latest production which is about...well, better if you listen to it). I respond to her that her boot is worn- out. She lowers her gaze and tells me "you too." She salutes me and leaves. Erika is going to change clothes because two teams of insurgentas are soon going to be playing football. One is called "8 de Marzo" and the other "The Princesses of the Selva." I don't know much about football, but my understanding is that the "princesses" play in a style rather far removed from the good manners of the corte real, and the "8 de Marzo" play as if it were the first of January uprising. In other words, a good number of them end up in the insurgent medical station. In fact, every time they're going to play, the medical people have the stretcher on one side of the field. "So we don't have to turn around," they say. They tied. Or the insurgentas tied in football. They went to penalties, and they got to the formation time without breaking the tie. Insurgenta Erika came and told me this. Erika is the romance counselor to the insurgentas, but this time she didn't come to tell me that a compañera's "heart was hurting" from lovesickness, but that the match was over now, and she was going to give a talk to the villages, more specifically, to the women of the villages. She was going as a civilian, or in civilian clothing. Well, that's what she said. Because I saw that she was wearing boots made in zapatista workshops, and they had "EZLN" embossed on one side. "Hmm, if you're going to wear those boots, it would be better if you wore the complete uniform," I told her, trying to be sarcastic. Erika left. She returned shortly with her uniform on. "Where are you going?" I asked her. "To the village," she responded. "But whatever made you go in uniform?" I asked/scolded her. "Because that's what you told me," she said I said. Understanding that it's useless to try and explain the qualities of subtle irony, I just ordered: "No, put civilian clothes on, and take off those boots." She left. She returned shortly in civilian clothing...and barefoot. I sighed, what else could I do? Don't believe Erika. My boot isn't worn out. The stitching is coming apart, which isn't the same. Besides, it's an eye that's split, and so the way the laces are intertwined looks like the political system under neoliberalism: it's a mess, and you don't know where the right is going or where the left is going. I was explaining this to Rolando when who should arrive but... First-Generation Toñita, or Toñita I (she of the kiss denied because "it was too scratchy," she of the little broken cup, she of the stalk of maize fashioned into a doll) is 15 years old now. "Or she finished 14, but she turned 15 and now she's going on 16," her papa, who is one of the oldest zapatista responsables among us, tells me. I concur, not confessing that I have never understood the higher mathematics which rule the calendars in the rebel zapatista communities (after trying to explain it to me, to no avail, Monarca resigned herself and just added: "I think it's because that's our way, which is just quite otherly"). The papa of Toñita I (or First-Generation Toñita) had come so I could see her, because it's been more than 10 years since I'd seen her for the last time. Ten years had not passed in vain, since Toñita I not only didn't deny me a kiss, but, without my saying anything, she gave me a hug and planted a kiss on the padded cheek of my ski-mask and turned all colors (Toñita I, not the ski-mask). I didn't say anything, but I thought "Hmm, I'm not doing well this year...and I haven't taken off my ski-mask even to bathe myself." Then Toñita I took some boots out of her backpack and put them on. I was going to ask her why she was putting her boots on after walking barefoot for six hours from her village, but Toñita spoke first, asking me if she could go "there" - and she pointed to where there was a group of insurgentas. Toñita I knows what a kiss, even if it's on a ski-mask, can achieve, so she didn't wait for an answer and left. While Toñita I was running over to see if they would let her play in the football match, her papa told me about their village (which I have always called, taking care that no one would hear me, "Stormy Peaks"). I had seen the scar left by a scratch on Toñita I's left arm, and I asked him about it. Toñita I's papa told me that a young man from the village had wanted to take her to the latrine (Note: let me explain to the unlikely reader of these lines that in some villages the latrine fulfills not only its smelly hygienic functions, but it's often also the place for couples to meet. There are not a few marriages in the communities which have originated in the not at all romantic location of the latrine. End of Note). What happened was that Toñita I did not want to go to the latrine. "It wasn't her pleasure" her papa informed me. And then the boy tried to force her, and then, "since it wasn't her pleasure," - her papa repeated - they struggled. Toñita I managed to escape, but, as they then said, it was published and the matter reached the village assembly. Toñita I's papa told me that they had wanted to put her in jail. I interrupted: "But why, if they attacked her, and she even had a scratch on her arm?" "Ah, Sup, you should see how the young man ended up" - the papa told me - "He was left flat out unconscious. Toñita is, as they say, quite fierce." Toñita I has, in addition to an attractive face, a sturdy figure or - how can I explain it to you? - well, in order for you to understand me, I'll just tell you that Rolando wanted her to play defense center on the zapatista football team. "But the insurgentas' team is already complete," I said to Rolando. He just added: "Maybe it is for the insurgentas' team, I wanted her for the men's team." Just then the people from the medical unit were going by with two quite battered insurgentas. Toñita I was crying because it was her fault that her team had been given two penalties. I understood Rolando and turned around to her papa and asked him: "Has Toñita I said whether she wanted to be an insurgenta?" Toñita I took her boots off and put them in her backpack. She left with her papa, walking barefoot. It wasn't long before, accompanied by her mother,...Second- Generation Toñita, or Toñita II, showed up. Elena is the name of Toñita II's, or Second Generation, mama. She is an insurgent medical lieutenant, and she has to her credit the fact that in January of 1994 she saved the lives of various insurgents and militants who were left wounded in the fighting in Ocosingo. In a more than modest field hospital, Elena operated on bullet wounds and extracted pieces of shrapnel from the bodies of zapatistas. "A compa died," she said when she made her report. She didn't mention the more than 30 combatants, who are now living and struggling in these lands, whom she saved. Toñita II is three years old. "Or she's finished two and she's going on four?" I asked, anticipating Elena's explanation. She laughed. I mean Elena laughed. Because Toñita II was shrieking at a level worthy of a more serious cause. And it so happened that, putting on my most flirtatious face (number 7 of my exclusive "catalogue of seductive gazes"), I had asked her for a kiss. Toñita II didn't even say "too scratchy" (not even an improved version), she just started crying with such vehemence that she had a group of insurgentas at her side offering her caramels, a little purse with a rabbit face (although it looked to me as if it were a possum face - the purse, you understand) - and they were even singing the one about the chivito to her, a song that is an uncommon success among zapatista boys and girls. "They don't love you," Major Irma told me, making matters worse. I answered: "Bah, she's crazy for me", and I acted as if my heart were not broken. Leaving the shop, Rolando handed me one of those needles called "capoteras" and a roll of nylon thread. In the hut of the EZLN Comandancia general now, I wonder... I don't know what the speed of dreams is, nor do I know whether to mend my boots or my heart. (To be continued...) From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos Mexico, September of 2004, 20 and 10. Translated by irlandesa