They tell that the very first gods, those who gave birth to the world, had a very bad memory and they tended to easily forget what they were doing or saying. Some say that it was because the greatest gods had no obligation to remember anything, because they came from when time had no time, that is to say, that there was nothing before them, and if there was nothing, then there was nothing to have a memory of. Who knows, but the fact is that they used to forget everything. This ill they inherited to all those who govern the world, and have governed it in the past.
But the greatest gods, the very first ones, learned that memory is the key to the future and that one should care for it like one cares for one’s land, one’s home, and one’s history. So that, as an antidote for their amnesia, the very first gods, those who gave birth to the world, made a copy of everything they had created and of all they knew. That copy they hid underground so that there would be no confusion with what was above ground. So that under the world’s ground there is another identical world to the one here above ground, with a parallel history to that of the surface. The first world is underground.
Subcomandante Marcos, An inverted periscope (or memory, a buried key).
La Jornada, February 24, 1998
During the last months, Mexican newspaper La Jornada[1] reported that even with its recent applied reform policies, Mexico ranks penultimate, only above Turkey, in failing the index set by the OCDE (Organization for the Cooperation of Economic Development), a club of 34 member-states who together account for 60 percent of global production. This organization declared Mexico it’s most insecure state in light of the high index of almost 17,000 homicides registered in the last year (the state of Chihuahua leading by 56x the murder rate in Yucatan). The OCDE indexes placed Mexico last in terms of security, education and per capita income. Mexico also leads with increments of obesity rates, 30% this year, only surpassed by the United States, making predictable a pronounced rise in health problems such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma; suicide rates are up 300% mainly in women. Mexico is also the only member state that has lost such an alarming amount of forests (155,000 hectares annually from 2005-2010). Human rights have had an historic regression under current president Enrique Peña Nieto. As La Jornada’s Luis Hernandez Navarro has pointed out, we are now in a very similar position as 20 years ago under Peña Nieto’s precursor Carlos Salinas de Gortari. They hold similar authoritarian and vertical attitudes and methods, evident in the slew of reforms currently being imposed upon the country, and the increased repression and criminalization of social protest. In this larger context, the EZLN uprising is not just a rumble from below, but an increasingly larger grieta opening up in our collective consciousness, one of Holloway’s “cracks” of actual democratic possibility.
Full-page ads of La Jornada’s print edition were dedicated to promoting the new face and duties of the Federal Police, la Policía Federal, on the national highways this past holiday season, showing helicopters flying overhead, with motorcycle and car units some of the only vehicles on what looks like a peaceful journey with little traffic. The Policía Federal is a merger of several previous federal police agencies designed to fight the growing threat posed by drug cartels. During a stopover I made in late December in Mexico City, I observed a rowdy team of youngsters-in-training with Policía Federal emblazoned on their jackets socializing at the Camino Real Airport. It was hard to imagine them in riot gear cracking down on protestors, or doing anything other than going to college were it seemed they belonged. During my earlier landing, I had noticed one of the main hangars on the tarmac was for the Policía Federal and observed how their uniforms and gear are shiny and new. A heavy investment was made for this police force, whose precursor the PFP, was the force sent in to quell the Oaxaca uprising of 2006.
No such expenditures made for the majority of Mexicans, much less poor indigenous ones, like those forgotten and ignored for so long who rose up in 1994. Gloria Muñoz tells us that what is most important about the Zapatista movement is their insistence on slowly walking a path of change…without giving up. Today, both Mexico and the Zapatistas are both the same and different: the Zapatista’s demands are as relevant as before with most people’s living conditions as bad as ever or worse, and the whole country reeling from big and small changes wrought by the simple passing of time together with the intensification of globalization. However, Silvia Ribeiro in her lovely article entitled “The Roads of the Winds” reminds us how worthy of note and recognition is the long walk of the Zapatistas since and even before the uprising 20 years ago, simply by creating territory “donde el pueblo manda y el gobierno obedece“ (where people govern and government obeys). In the midst of the onslaught of destructive privatization, with ever-increasing poverty and economic, social, environmental devastation, the Zapatistas are not only an ethical compass, but also a living example of what is possible and already here, of what is already a reality.
The key, it seems, comes from below. Perhaps as in a “balkanization from below” as coined by Andrej Grubacic, who brings a Balkan inverted periscope to this concept of people joining together across their differences against the common oppressor of neoliberal policies and insatiable capital—people united in one “No” whilst holding on to their various and different “Yes-es.” In Mexico, as in much of Latin America, it is also very much of an indigenous below. In Chiapas and much of Mayan territory, below also comes from where the heart resides–as in the oft-quoted Zapatista maxim “abajo y a la izquierda” (from below and to the left), a below also rooted in heartfelt shared understanding and valorization of keeping one’s word and intention honorable. How are we cultivating and developing this kind of value and honor in our world today?
In their open invitation to the world for their 20th anniversary celebrations this past 2014 New Year’s, the EZLN made only one exception: the mainstream media. It’s nothing personal against anyone, but draws a line at a continued campaign of disinformation, conscious or unconscious, as it seems some reporters do not realize what huge distorting goggles they have firmly strapped on their heads when they come to gaze at the “rebels in balaclavas.” These reporters’ view through their goggles is so cloudy and myopic that they completely fail to see what is right in front of them, in full-view of the world. One example of this recently, was when Al-Jazeera America published an article about the Zapatista rebels being “in retreat,” their sub-headline said, “the Zapatistas trust few people and reject the outside world.” Meanwhile, the reality is that the Zapatistas have opened up in an extraordinary way, inviting the world in not only to their anniversary celebrations, but also into the intimacy of their homes, to witness what it means to build a practice of autonomy and liberty.
The Al-Jazeera article was published while session two of the new Zapatista Escuelita was in progress (so far, there have been three sessions of the “first grade,” to be followed by second and third). We were amongst thousands invited from all over the world to come live, work, and learn with Zapatista families throughout their five autonomous municipalities in what became a true global space of encounter. In an era where education everywhere is increasingly privatized and standardized amidst skyrocketing costs, the poorest sector of Mexican society has invited the world to intimately witness and learn from their 20 years practice of building autonomy. Quite the opposite of rejecting the outside world, La Escuelita de la Libertad según los Zapatistas (the Little School of Liberty according to the Zapatistas) is not only an act of trust in everyday people, but also an unprecedented act of hospitality and generosity unmatched anywhere in human history. It is also a recognition of their own work and worth, seeing the need to share with others what they are learning as they go. It is likely the most important global educational and political project of our time. It is a true example of what Rosset and Martinez call a dialogo de saberes, an opportunity for a dialogue and exchange of diverse knowledges.[2]
As several analysts have stated, the meta-theory of the Zapatistas is in their practice. So it is by coming to learn with them–alongside in the fields picking coffee, maize, beans, squash, yucca, bananas, etc., or in their houses making tortillas at dawn, accompanying them in the everyday practice of building autonomy in ways large and small–is the beginning of unearthing the possibility of another kind of life, of creating another kind of justice, healthcare, government, education…and better ways of relating to each other. This is the learning we’re entrusted to return with to our own places, to put into practice within our own contexts.
But it is not only this that gives the Zapatistas credibility, recognized by anybody willing to listen. In 2006 the Mexican institutional Left broke with the Zapatistas, from 2006-2013 it became evident that it is the whole political class that is bankrupt. We are in need of a unifying thread to bring us together in protesting our being fed up, our “hartazgo.” In their 20 years of visibility the EZLN has known how to both listen to civil society and how to keep its word. In an era and arena so bereft of anything resembling honor, keeping one’s word has been key and marked them as exceptional in this time.
But there is still mainstream fear of that which comes from below, and of those who are dark and different. Ernesto Ledesma on the Internet TV show Rompevientos reminds us of how even in San Cristobal just a little over a year ago before the historic Zapatista silent march, coleto (the local dominant class—obviously non-indigenous) businesses closed saying, “ahi viene la indiada” (there come the Indians).
In thinking about what the Escuelita has to teach us, I keep returning to this notion of “below” as in the first world is underground. But not “First World” as in that absurd differentiation we were taught back then, when/where First World=Developed Nations, Second=Developing Nations, and Third=Under Developed Nations. Rather, first world as in, mundo primero, that first world from below, the knowledge of below, the collective Saberes Otros, those other knowledges that we are uncovering, slowly, as we also learn to recognize them as worthy, as valuable, as indispensable…as having been there all along, just deeply buried, not dead nor as an artifact to be excavated, but as a life underground, very much alive…Living.
[1] La Jornada, 28 December 2013.
[2] María Elena Martínez-Torres & Peter M. Rosset, (2014): Diálogo de saberes in La Vía Campesina: food sovereignty and agroecology, The Journal of Peasant Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2013.872632
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