The Zapatista movement: a millenarian myth?

Even before the euphoria which, since time immemorial, leads us to celebrate the New Year had died away, the dawn of 1 January 1994 brought with it the news of an armed uprising in the state of Chiapas in south-east Mexico. When they heard about it through the television and, the following day, through the press, the Mexicans and a large part of the conscious citizens all over the world learnt that the indigenous peoples had risen up and occupied at least four of the main towns -Altamarino, Ocosingo, Las Margaritas and San Cristóbal de las Casas- in this state bordering on Guatemala.

On 2 January the first Lacandona Jungle Declaration, signed by the Clandestine Revolutionary Committee-General Command (CCRI-CG) of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), and addressed primarily to the People of Mexico was published (La Jornada, 2 January 1994). In this declaration they described themselves as "the product of 500 years of struggle", as the heirs of those who fought against the Spanish conquistadors in the 16^th century and later on in 1810 -- in the so-called War of Independence -- until the Revolution of 1910, when Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata emerged as military leaders:

At a distance of over two thousand days, those words still resound like a call to consciousness of the most sensitive human beings who are still fighting for "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" - as in the fateful days of the French Revolution, betrayed by Napoleon Bonaparte on 18 Brumaire 1799. Today as yesterday, in numerous countries throughout the world, the Zapatistas' denunciation has not lost any of its currency, as, like them, in the Lacandona Jungle Declaration they state:

"the dictators have been waging a genocidal war against our peoples for many years, so we ask you for your determined contribution in supporting this plan of the Mexican people who are fighting for work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace".

Dubbed by many as a "millenarian myth", "delirium" or "political provocation" from the very first days of 1994, the Zapatista movement has nevertheless stood firm. It continues to resist. It does not give up. With all its centuries-old humiliation, hunger and misery, they persevere in their now peaceful struggle to achieve respect for their dignity as human beings and a just and dignified peace: "If we die now -- say the Zapatistas -- it will not be with shame, but with dignity, like our forefathers".

The Zapatista utopia

Neither "millenarian myth", nor "delirium" nor "madness". A dream, certainly, a utopian dream. That, in my opinion, is the Zapatista movement that emerged onto the scene that 1 January 1994, but which has its roots in the millenary culture of the Maya peoples whose vestiges can still be admired in Umxal, Chichén Itzá and Palenque, and whose ancestral myths we can approach by reading Popol Vuh, which appears in the background of many of the writings of the insurgent Subcomandante Marcos.

Once the armed confrontation had concluded, in the early days of January, the EZLN consented to talks with the government in order to reach an agreement, or starting point, for a "peace with justice and dignity". From 20 February to 1 March 1994, the "Cathedral Talks" took place in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Out of them came a proposal from the federal government to the EZLN. However, after many months consulting children, old people, men and women of the indigenous communities, on 10 June of that same year, they reported that 97.88% of those consulted rejected the Peace Accords proposal presented by the "supreme government". That same day, however, the Zapatistas issued a call for a "national dialogue for peace with democracy, freedom and justice". This dialogue would later come to be known as the "National Democratic Convention" and was held in the first Aguascalientes built by the Zapatistas in Guadalupe Tepeyac, during the month of August. From that day to this, this dialogue with civil society has continued without interruption.

A dream that is dreamed awake...

To mention just one of the most recent cases, in July of this year the First "Democratic Teaching and Zapatista Dream" Meeting was held in the Aguascalientes of La Realidad. In his opening address to the Meeting, Subcomandante Marcos once again took his inspiration from the pages of Popol Vuh and recounted how the first gods, "those of the beginning.... called mother ceiba so the world could rest on her head… Since then the world has been where it is. The ceiba keeps it far from the night of the worst, the most terrible, death, that of oblivion..." (La Jornada, 3 August 1999).

Addressing himself to the schoolteachers gathered there, he welcomed them to La Realidad, "the Reality that hurts and dreams, that waits patiently for something good, juster, freer, more democratic... Mexican Reality that dreams not of the best of all possible worlds, but dreams of and deserves a tomorrow. This is our dream which, by a Zapatista paradox, stops us from going to sleep. The only dream that is dreamed awake..."

Even though the EZLN is surrounded by the Army and the Zapatista "support bases" are hounded and harassed by thousands of "paramilitaries" (veritable "death squads"), the struggle goes on. As in the early days, they maintain their demand for democracy, freedom, liberty, justice and peace. Now, as then, they still call upon all of us to carry out "a job, a mission, a task, something to be done, a path to tread, a tree to sow and grow, a dream to be watched over" (ibid.).

Perhaps for that very reason, the Zapatista dream belongs to all human beings, since if Power fights against humanity, "for humanity there fight and dream the dispossessed", the excluded, the landless, the faceless, the nameless…, those of us who are only "a useless number in the accounts of big capital", as Major Ana María said in the First Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism held in July and August 1996 in several places in the Lacandona Jungle.

The numerous documents and communiqués released by the Zapatistas have gradually sketched out a new set of political ethics, ethics based on the dignity inherent in all human beings, ethics primarily axised around freedom, justice and democracy, values permanently violated by the powerful whose hypocritical, hidden violence is increasing the extreme misery all over the world.

(4 August 1999)

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