And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
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From: "PRENSA NUEVO AMANECER" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "NAP ENGLISH-A"<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 12:19:20 +0000
Subject: Marcos communique
Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN SPANISH IN MEXICO
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TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY irlandesa FOR THE EZLN
AND PRENSA NUEVO AMANECER
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ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO
January 1999
For: Guadalupe Loaeza
Reforma Newspaper
Mexico, D.F.
From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
EZLN
Chiapas, Mexico
Madame:
I recently read your letter, published in the pages of the Reforma
newspaper on December 31, 1998. I am grateful for your lines, as well as
for the sincerity which inspires them and the honest interest which, from
the beginning of our movement, you have had in Chiapas, and the Mexican
indigenous in general.
I do not know Jean Marie Le Clezio's book, nor if Federal Express has
service to the Selva Lacandona (but if it's gum and paste, the address is:
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, EZLN, Playa de Trigo Headquarters,
mountains of the Mexican Southeast, Chiapas, Mexico). It would also be
good if you were to send a copy to Senor Zedillo. In addition to avoiding
being criticized for being biased that way, you would also be helping
Zedillo read something which would open the narrow vistas of his political
vision.
Good, let's get on to your letter. You ask if the zapatista indigenous
communities are worse off than before the uprising. No. We continue
without schools, teachers, hospitals, doctors, medicines, good prices for
our products, land, technology in order to work it, fair salaries, food of
sufficient quality and quantity, decent housing, exactly the same as before
1994. The communities which are not zapatista are in the same
circumstances. We have not accepted the government's hand-outs. We have
not accepted them, nor will we, because, as demonstrated by the living
conditions of the indigenous who have accepted them, the problems are not
resolved, and the quality of life does not improve on the most minimal
level. But, above all, we do not accept them because we did not rise up
for schools, credits and Conasupo stores for ourselves. We rose up for a
better country, one where, among other things,
our rights as Indian peoples are recognized, we are respected and we are
considered to be citizens, and not beggars. Despite everything, we have
tried to improve our conditions, and, in order to do that, in some places
we have started schools, clinics and pharmacies with health workers. This
little we have, we have built and re-built (because one of the "heroic"
tasks of the federal Army in Chiapas is the destruction of schools,
clinics, pharmacies and libraries) through our own efforts and with the
help of good persons, organized and not, who come to these lands.
And, understand, Madame, that they have helped us very much (as never
before in the long history of the indigenous peoples), but never to make
war. No one has come to offer arms, bullets or military training.
All of them have come offering financial aid and knowledge, in order to
improve the education, housing, food, health, work. These people live with
us for a time, they see us as we are, with our defects (which are neither
few nor small) and with our virtues (which we also have, but no more, nor
greater, than people in other parts of the world, of other colors,
cultures, races). Perhaps some day you can speak with some of these
persons; any one of them would give you a more real and complete
perspective than that which I am trying, ineffectively, to convey in these
lines.
We have things now which we did not have before, and it is very little
compared with all the needs. But the difference between what we lacked
before and what we lack now, is that, before, it did not matter to anyone
that we did not have the minimal necessities. What we did have before
January 1, 1994, and what we have lost since then, is despair, is
bitterness, is resignation.
We are poor, yes, but you will see that our poverty is richer than the
poverty of others, and, above all, richer than that which we had before the
uprising. And now our poverty has a tomorrow. Why? Well, because there
is something more important, which we did not have prior to the uprising,
and it has now become our most powerful and feared (by our enemies) weapon:
the word. You will see how good this weapon is. It is good for fighting,
for defending yourself, for resisting. And it has a great advantage over
all the weapons which the government, its military and the paramilitaries
have: it does not destroy, it does not kill.
I well know that Senor Labastida accuses us of being responsible for the
deterioration in the standard of living in the zapatista communities.
Labastida represents a government which has half its army in the indigenous
communities, which keeps a substitute, interim, illegitimate and illegal
governor in place with bayonets, which squanders thousands of millions of
pesos, not in improving the standard of life of the non-zapatista
communities, but rather in paying for costly press campaigns and for
financing paramilitary groups, a government which orders its troops to
thwart the working of the land, which rapes women, which promotes the
cultivation and trafficking in drugs, which preaches the religion of
alcohol and prostitution.
Tell me: is it not cynical to accuse us of what they classify in their
manuals as "low-intensity warfare'? Is is not a mockery of all of us that
the same government which has promoted the deterioration in the standard of
living of the Mexican people (let me cite information from the newspaper
which has the honor of having you among their editorialists: In 1999, 4
million poor persons will no longer be receiving assistance for food or for
their community development, 1,116,000 children no longer receive
subsidized milk, the spending for UNAM, IPN and UAM fell 50%, the financing
for scientific research loses 42%, the construction of health units is
reduced by 20%, Conasupo reduces its spending by 75% and prepares for its
disappearance, 34 million Mexicans who buy maize in Diconsa stores are
confronting a price increase of 100%. Reforma, 1/2/99), accuses us of
being those responsible for the low standard of living in the indigenous
communities?
Now, Madame, suppose I were a fraud with amazing powers of manipulation.
Suppose that I had managed to trick the most important media of the 5
continents, the Non-Governmental Organizations of various countries, the
millions of Mexicans, and you. Suppose I had deceived them, and, in
indigenous Mexico and in Chiapas, nothing is happening: the indigenous
have not lived in conditions of the most outrageous misery, nor is it true
that the life of an Indian in Ocosingo is worth less than that of a hen,
nor is it the truth that in 1993, the finqueros exercised droit du seigneur
in the families of their peons. Suppose that it is an invention that the
best example of the application of the State of Law in Chiapas is the
history (true, believe me) of the indigenous, imprisoned for some years,
and condemned to 30 years in jail for having assassinated his father ("with
malice aforethought", read the sentence, signed proudly by the judge in
charge of the case), who paid his "debt to society" in the Cerro Hueco
Jail, while the only thing he received from the outside was a package of
tortillas that, without fail, was personally delivered by...his papa!
Suppose that it is a lie that the army and the police participate, and
participate with singular enthusiasm, in the attacks against the indigenous
communities, that it is untrue and that it is a slander that Mexico is
hurriedly rushing towards modernity while trying to forget the more than 10
million first inhabitants of these lands.
Anyway, Madame, suppose that everything is as I have written. Yes? Good,
now I beg you to answer me the following:
1. - If the EZLN had not risen up in arms on January 1, 1994, would the
government, Mexico, the world, you, those columnists, what you pointed out,
have turned around to look at the Indian peoples? Was it not, prior to
'94, an insult to call someone an 'Indian'?
2. - If the fundamental (and national) causes which caused the
marginalization of the Indian peoples of Mexico, and which are the root
causes of the zapatista uprising, have not been resolved, nor has the
groundwork been laid for their solution (that is, could provoke another
uprising): would it not be irresponsible to sign a peace agreement,
knowing that the war could come again? Is it not more responsible to
demand that the zapatista uprising end, but also everything which caused
it, and which made it possible and necessary, to end?
3. - If Marcos is the one responsible for the zapatista indigenous
communities not having bettered their standard of living, because he
'induces' or 'obliges' (depending on the columnist) them to reject
govenrment aid: why are the indigenous communities which are not zapatista
the same as, or worse off, than those who suffer 'the zapatista opression'?
Why, despite the thousands of millions that the government says it has
invested in Chiapas, 'to resolve the cause of the conflict and the social
backwardness', the more than one million indigenous persons have not raised
their standard of living? Are they all zapatistas?
Good, now suppose that those columnists who keep you awake are telling the
truth, and it is Marcos who is keeping the conflict from being resolved
peacefully, and that he is only seeking to draw it out, just so he can
correspond with the editorial page writers of the Reforma (something which
would be impossible, they say, if the peace had already been signed), that
the zapatistas say they want peace, but they do not return to the dialogue
table with the government because, in reality, they are not interested in
the Indian peoples, but rather in their political plans.
Suppose that Zedillo, Labastida, Rabasa, Albores, Green and the one you
point out, are right, and the indigenous communities (except, of course,
for the stupid zapatista peoples) are now living in the abundance which the
government has had the goodness to provide them with. Suppose it is true
that the government has given many demonstrations of its willingness to
dialogue, and Zedillo's variously noted visits to Chiapas - in 1998 - were
in order to support his will for peace, and not in order to threaten or to
support the repressive strikes which Albores led throughout that year.
Suppose it is true that the government does not see the EZLN as a military
problem, but rather as a political one, and that it is true they want to
resolve the problem politically.
Suppose all of that, Madame, and, then, answer these other questions:
4. - If we zapatistas are not a military danger, and they could finish us
off in a matter of minutes, why does the government have more than 60,000
troops in what they call the 'conflict zone'? So that the indigenous
communities can learn the 'advantages of Western life', that is, the
prostitution, drugs and alcohol which accompany the federal garrisons when
they are set up within the communities?
5. - If the government has 60,000 soldiers 'enforcing the Firearms and
Explosives Law' in chiapaneco territory: where did the paramilitaries,
Peace and Justice, Red Mask, MIRA, Chinchulines, Los Punales and Albores of
Chiapas, obtain, and where do they obtain, their arms, ammunition,
equipment and training? Where are the high-caliber arms used in the Acteal
massacre?
6. - If the objective of the dialogue and negotiations is to reach accords
(such as those at San Andres, signed by the government and the EZLN on
February 16, 1996), and the accords are not carried out: what are the
dialogue and negotiations for?
7. - If the government did not carry out the first peace accords which it
signed, what guarantees the zapatistas that the government is going to
carry out the final accords when the return to civil life is agreed?
No, Madame, it is neither task nor punishment. It is Old Antonio's old
method: ask in order to walk.
If, despite all of this, confusion prevails, let me suggest something to
you. Call your friend Sofia, and invite her to visit, along with you, the
indigenous communities of Chiapas (the zapatista and the non-zapatista).
Come incognito, that way we won't be able to set a stage in order to
deceive you. If you want to experience directly the xenophobic atmosphere
which the government has managed to create in Chiapas, remember not to
speak Spanish at any of the military or immigration checkponts (English or
French is good, although, for Immigration, anything which is not Spanish,
is English). Take the plane to Tuxtla, from there travel to San Cristobal
de las Casas, and, making your base there, you can travel throughout the
zapatista and non-zapatista communities in Los Altos, La Selva and the
Northern zones of Chiapas. With the "look" of foreigners, you will be able
to enjoy the humiliating treatment which the military and immigration
agents give the people from other countries who dare to leave the tourist
routes. Come. Come to the communities. See and listen to the people.
Perhaps you will not find the absolute truth, but it is certain that you
will discover where the lie is.
Almost at the end of your letter, you say, and say well, that we do not
want another Acteal. No, neither you, nor we, want it. But they, those
who say they are governing, are willing to repeat it as many times as might
be necessary in order to destroy, not just the zapatistas, but the Indian
peoples as a whole. They want to repeat it until the Indian peoples cease
to be so and, or, disappear or are "westernized".
We would not think of allowing it, and we believe that many, such as you,
would not allow this horror to be repeated either. That is why we are
making a new effort for peace and dialogue with THE CONSULTATION FOR
RESPECT FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIAN PEOPLES AND FOR THE END TO THE WAR OF
EXTERMINATION. Yes, I know the name is quite long, but what it aspires to
is even greater.
That is why I am telling you to talk with your friend Sofia, and come to an
agreement with her, form your brigade for promoting and publicizing the
consultation (note: this does not mean that you would be on our side, that
you would turn into zapatistas, or that you, either completely or
partially, endorse our positions), registering at the CONTACT OFFICE FOR
THE CONSULTATION (telephone and fax: (967) 8-10-13 and (967) 8-21-59;
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]), and begin explaining to your friends and
acquaintances (which are not always the same) that the consultation will be
on March 21, 1999 throughout the country, and in those countries where
Mexicans organize themselves in order to give their opinions, that there
are only 4 questions, and that all Mexican men and women, over the age of
12, can participate.
I am not trying to recruit you, Madame (as some of your acquaintances are
most certainly going to tell you), I am only inviting you to work for
peace. That is why I am telling you something very simple and urgent:
Acteal must not be repeated, and, in order for it not to be repeated, it is
necessary to recognize the rights of the Indian peoples and to stop the war
of extermination. Does that seem like a slogan? Believe me, Madame, it is
not, it is something more definitive: it is a duty.
If, after all and everything, you are still confused, do not worry, Madame.
Look at that bridge which joins the head with the heart, the thought with
the emotion (the soul, some say). Look, and listen, I am certain that you
will know what is good, which is not always the best, but which is never
unnecessary. Finally, in order to increase your confusion, here goes a
zapatuda anecdote: Around here, they set up a fashionable cooperative, it
was called The Elegant Zapatista, and its motto was Against Reactionary Bad
Taste, Revolutionary Elegance. How about that, eh? Isn't our perversity
obvious?
Vale. Salud and, you will see, the only thing we are really guilty of is
having let down the hem of hope.
>From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, January 1999.
P.S. - We send you our best regards and we thank you for the reference to
the little ski-masks. There are not any...yet, but we will keep you
informed.
___________________________________________________
NUEVO AMANECER PRESS-N.A.P.To know about us visit:
http://www.nap.cuhm.mx/nap0.htm (spanish)
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