September is the ninth month of the year, and above it's as if the Moon has a tummy. She even blushes a bit when she lets herself fall over the west. The rain and the clouds almost make an appearance, but they grow lazy and remain behind the mountain, the one which rises to the east. Below, Tania Libertad is singing that song on the little tape player that goes "they're not going to stand in our way (...) we shall grow despite the autumn." Mixed up in the shadows, the shadow is writing a letter. After "Zapatista Army etcetera" and the date, September of 2004, can be read... To: Pierluigi Sullo
Editorial Office of the Carta Weekly
Italy, European Continent, Planet Earth Pedro Luis, brother: Greetings from the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. I suppose you might think the "Pedro Luis" strange, but I have been influenced by the compas' "way" of "zapatizing" names, and so I'm using "Pedro Luis" for "Pierluigi." Well, then, I received the letter you wrote and which you didn't send. I received the letter in the Carta (August 26 - September 1, 2004, Year VI, Number 31). Since my Italian doesn't extend even to the point of looking like the "Itañol" of the "turbineros and tubineras" (who have been working hard for years in order to bring light to La Realidad), I had to ask for someone to do me the favor of translating it. And they did it, but in a neo language that we call "Itazapañol" here, which, if my memory doesn't fail me, Vanessa inaugurated when, always disobedient, she remained for years, living in the zapatista reality. Things being as they were, I had to resort to some dictionaries they had sent us some time ago (I don't quite remember, I believe it was Mantovant or Alfio). In order to do that, first I had to look for the dictionaries and find them. They were, as was to be expected, leveling one of the legs of one of the tables of one of the Comandancia Generales of the one and only EZLN. It took me longer to intuit than to know what the letter in Carta said. Perhaps I am wrong, but I managed to understand that the objective of your letter was to greet us...and to posit problems. The epistolary genre is, in my humble opinion, one of the best means of debating (another, better yet, is political practice). You didn't say so openly, but anyone could notice that your letter basically poses, now from rebel Italy, the same problem of the speed of dreams. And, even though you don't say so explicitly either, from the Italy which struggles, or dreams, you also answer "I don't know." Well, I can answer the problems you're raising with the axiom of the ineffable and great (of ego) Don Durito of La Lacandona: "There's no problem so great it can't be mulled over." Although it appears to me to be an excellent recipe (it has given me good results on more than one occasion), I sincerely believe that you are not searching for a solution, but rather for a discussion. The what to do in Italy? is, in effect, a problem. And to my way of thinking it is part of the problem of what to do in the world? Now our response, we, the zapatistas, is..."we don't know." I know that you don't expect anything else of us, knowing us as well as you know us. However, from our land and our struggle, we can say the following: First. In the Mexico of today, all politicians - even those who are leading in the opinion polls, in the front pages of the news stories or in the number of demonstrators, regardless of the color of the rhetoric they brandish or the sign of their party organization - can count on the sullen mistrust of us, the zapatistas, with our skepticism and incredulity. Based solely on their words, promises, intentions, figures, opinion studies, they will absolutely not receive anything good from us. Nothing, not even the benefit of the doubt. Like the chief of the Liberation Army of the South, General Emiliano Zapata in front of Francisco I. Madero, our hostility towards the politicians of the center will be an invariable rule: and, like Emiliano Zapata in front of the presidential chair, we shall continue turning our backs on the National Palace and on those who aspire to take that seat. And the same thing goes for the self-styled "Congress of the Union" and the circus Judicial Branch of the Federation. Second. In the specific case of the official self- proclaimed leftist political parties in Mexico (and which, it should not be forgotten, are not the only political organizations of the left which exist in our country), we cannot stop laughing bitterly when their party officials, leaders, deputies, senators and little paid canaries throw Vicente Fox's failure to fulfill his campaign promise of resolving the Chiapas "problem" in 15 minutes in his face. We do not forget that those who are criticizing that were the same ones who voted for a law which, in addition to failing to act on a breach of elemental justice, was in fundamental contravention of the cries of the Indian peoples of Mexico and of millions of persons in our country and in other parts of the planet. They are the same ones who are encouraging paramilitary groups to harass and attack the zapatista communities. They are the same ones who are striving to appear pleasant to a right (whether it's called the ecclesiastical or the business high hierarchy) which, it must be said, feels no attraction for them. They are the same ones who are carrying under their arms the economic and police plans which have been drawn up in the boardrooms of international greed. Even with all of this, we cannot endorse, with our silence, the legal dirty business with which they are trying to prevent the person who heads the Mexico City government from running in 2006 for the Presidency of the country. It seems to us to be an illegitimate act, poorly wrapped up in legal fallacies, an attack against the right of Mexicans to decide if one or the other or no one shall govern them. The commission of a felony of that nature would mean, neither more nor less, than the invalidation of Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution, which establishes the right of Mexicans to decide their form of government. It would be, to put it in simple terms, a "soft" coup d'etat. By pointing this out we are not putting ourselves on the side of a person or a government program. Even less does it translate into support for a party which is not only not of the left and is not progressive, but is not even republican. Quite simply we are putting ourselves on the side of the history of the struggle of our peoples. Third. Elections pass, governments pass. The resistance remains as it is, one more alternative for humanity and against neoliberalism. Nothing more, but nothing less. However, consistent with the aversion we profess for dogmas, we will always admit that we could be wrong, and it could be, in effect, as the fashionable hacks are now predicting, necessary, urgent, essential, to deliver ourselves up unconditionally into the arms of those who, from above, are promoting changes which can only be achieved from below. We could be wrong. When we realize it because stupid reality gets in the way of our path, we will be the first to recognize that mistake in front of everyone, those who are with us and those who are opposed. It will be that way because we believe, among other things, that honesty in front of the mirror is necessary for all of those who, in word or in fact, are committed to the building of a new world. In any event, we give life to our wise moves and to our mistakes. I sincerely believe that, ever since the dawn of the first of January of 1994, we have won the right to decide for ourselves our path, its rhythm, its speed, its accompaniment, continuous or sporadic. We shall not cede that right. We are willing to die to defend it. Fourth. We shall continue doing what we believe is our duty. And without regard to the "ratings" our actions receive, the space we occupy in the news, or the threats and prophecies which they are good enough - from both sides of the political spectrum - to prescribe for us every time we don't do what they want us to do or we don't say what they want us to say (something which happens all the time). We will not join in the hysterical clamor of the political class, and of their fans in the "political analysis" columns. Those people who try to impose, always from above, an agenda which has nothing to do with what is happening below in our country, the implacable dismantling of the foundations of national sovereignty. Nor will we flail about concerning the calendar, hastening 2006 and its uncertainty, its festival of vanities, its cynical squandering of resources and stupidity. Even less will our actions be guided by those who are demanding that we contribute the names of prisoners, disappeared and dead, while they contribute names to the nominating lists. Fifth. This does not mean that we do not listen. We do, and we shall continue to do so. From all over the world we receive words of encouragement and of criticism, advice and warnings, support and condemnation. We listen to everything, and we keep it in the collective heart which we are. Anyone, anyplace in the world, can be certain that the zapatistas will listen to them. But it is one thing to listen and another thing to obey. We don't give a damn about the "polemics" as to whether the zapatistas are revolutionaries or reformers, "lights" or "heavies", naïve or malicious, good or bad, and, like the mosquitoes in the long nights of the Mexican Southeast, they are not what keeps us awake. The transnationals do not govern in zapatista lands, nor does the IMF, nor the World Bank, nor imperialism, nor the empire, nor governments of any sign. Here the communities make the fundamental decisions. I don't know what that is called. We call it "zapatismo." But ours is not a liberated territory, nor a utopian commune. Nor an experimental laboratory for nonsense or the paradise of an orphaned left. This is a rebel territory, in resistance, invaded by tens of thousands of federal soldiers, police, intelligence services, spies from the various "developed" nations, counterintelligence officials and opportunists of all types. A territory composed of tens of thousands of Mexican indigenous, harassed, persecuted, attacked for refusing to stop being indigenous, Mexican and human beings, that is, citizens of the world. Sixth. As far as the rest of the planet goes, our ignorance is encyclopedic (it would, in fact, take up more volumes than the complete works of the external and internal words of the neo-zapatistas which, incidentally, abound), and there is little or nothing we can say about political organizations of the left which are struggling, or say they are struggling, under other skies. There, as everywhere, we prefer to look downwards, to movements and trends of resistance and the building of alternatives. We only turn our gaze upward if a hand from below points us there. Seventh. We are trying, with our clumsiness and our wise actions, definitions or vagueness, just trying, but putting life into it, to build an alternative. Full of imperfections and always incomplete, but our alternative. If we have arrived where we have arrived it has not, however, been just because of our abilities and decisions. It has been because of the support of men and women from throughout the world who have understood that in these lands there are not a bunch of needy people, eager for handouts and pity, but human beings, just like them, who are yearning and working for a better world, one where all worlds fit. I believe that such an effort deserves the sympathy and support of every honest and noble person in the world. And I believe, more times than not, that sympathy and that support finds its most fortunate version in the struggle they are undertaking or maintaining in their respective realities, whatever their culture, their language, their flag, their kind of footwear, shoes, sneakers, trainers, flip-flops, sandals or heels. In this sense you are closer, in our geography, to the real zapatista communities than the distances noted on maps. The Europe of below is thus closer: disobedient and self-managing Italy; the Greece which communicates with smoke signals; the France of the flip-flops and of those without papers and without homes, but with dignity; rebel and solidarity Spain; Euzkal Herria which resists and does not surrender; rebel Germany; committed Switzerland; compañera Denmark; persistent Sweden; conscientious Norway; the Patria denied to the Kurds; the marginal Europe which the immigrants suffer ; the entire Europe of the young people who refuse to buy shares in the markets of cynicism...and the Mazahua Mexican indigenous women. Rebellions and resistances which we feel are closer than the endless distances which separate us from the arrogant city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and from the political parties who talk with the left and act with the right. Well, that's all for now, compa Pedro Luis. Believe me, I have no regrets about running a risk of "being judged as someone who's crazy, who doesn't see reality" through what I'm writing you. However it may be, the fundamental problem remains, to wit, that of determining the speed of dreams. While it's being resolved, best wishes, and the next time you write, send, in addition to the letter in Carta, a translation, even if it's in "Itañol." Vale, salud and may the clamor from above not prevent the murmur from below from being heard. (To be continued...) From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos Mexico, September of 2004. 20 and 10.