The Speed of Dreams (Part One): Boots
05/10/2004
- Opinión
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
https://www.alainet.org/pt/node/110683
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