DECLARATION FROM THE SECOND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE NATIONAL INDIGENOUS CONGRESS AND THE INDIGENOUS GOVERNING COUNCIL

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To the Support Networks
To the Indigenous Governing Council
To the National and International Sixth
To the peoples of Mexico and the world

Sisters, brothers:

From the Second Plenary Assembly of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG), held October 11-14 at the CIDECI-UNITIERRA, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, we respectfully address the compañer@s of the CIG Support Networks as well as the peoples of this country and the world in order to discuss and together take new steps toward the construction of the new world that we all need.

We bring you this urgent message because as originary peoples our struggle against the profound sickness caused by capitalism means that we must weave life—this is the task given to us by our ancestors. With hope based in memory and in times to come, we sow and grow life everywhere we can, weaving ourselves collectively as a people and thereby weaving ourselves also as persons.

(Continuar leyendo…)

An invitation to: “The Impossible Movie Theater”
Sixth Commission of the EZLN, October 2018

 ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
Sixth Commission of the EZLN
Mexico

October, 2018

To the persons, groups, collectives and organizations of the national and international Sixth:
To the support networks for the Indigenous Governing Council:
To those for whom cinema is a hobby, vice, or obsession:

Part I and only:

THE IMPOSSIBLE MOVIE THEATER.

(Opening scene: The Serpent Offers the Apple)

 You’re walking without a destination. You don’t know where you’re going, much less why. Behind you is the busy street which runs along the wall whose crumbling facade mocks the also deteriorating poster of the Happy Family. In the distance lies the monumental stadium and its impertinent question: “Who rules?” Anyway, right now you have no idea where you are and you’re starting to wonder if you should turn back…but you don’t know where or why you’d go in that direction either. So you stop, but only for a moment because a little girl grabs your hand and hurries you along: “Hurry up or we’ll be late to the movie.” You don’t have a chance to respond because you’re immediately faced with a colorful sign declaring: “All adults must be accompanied by a child [niño].” But someone has crossed out “un niño” and written “a girl [una niña].” Another anonymous hand has scratched that out to write “unoa niñoa.” Someone else crossed that out and wrote instead, “None of that matters here.”

Someone wearing a ski-mask stops you, but the little girl says to the masked face, “he’s with me.” The masked person allows you to pass. You walk down a slope partially covered in cement, through puddles, rocks, and mud. Off to the side there are multiple wood structures with tin roofs. The fog is heavy, so the humble structures appear and disappear with every step you take, like “fade in” and “fade out” scenes. You keep going without knowing where you’re headed. The atmosphere reminds you of an old mystery movie…or a horror film.

(Continuar leyendo…)

(Story read at the close of the “CompARTE for Life and Freedom 2018” arts festival in Morelia, Caracol “Whirlwind of our Words,” mountains of the Mexican Southeast.)

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It may have been a string of random events, without any apparent relation between them, that brought about this tragedy.

It may have been merely a coincidence, a bit of bad luck, as if destiny decided to feed rumors of its existence by dropping pieces of a jigsaw puzzle onto the now-cracked open heads of humans and machines.

Or maybe the Storm itself (yes, that storm that Zapatismo insists on calling attention to and, like most things we say, no one else seems to notice) revealed a spoiler, a hint of what is coming. It was as if the incoherent software on which reality apparently runs suddenly flashed an urgent warning, an unexpected alert, a signal so subtle that it was only noticed by the most experienced lookouts, those who focus on examining horizons so distant that they don’t even appear as factors in the frenetic statistics of the global system. After all, statistics function to show tendencies deeper than the drama of the day-to-day. What’s one murdered woman? A number: one more statistic, one less woman. Statistically speaking, you’d need more, many more of these “gendered” murders to even suggest evidence of a tendency—which would be that of the system’s runaway gallop toward the abyss, skidding through blood, mud, ash, shit, and destruction. What’s on the horizon? War. What’s down the beaten path? War. In the capitalist system, war is the starting point, the ending point, and everything in between.

But maybe I’m just talking madness. After all, this is a story, and one has to be careful not to veer into biased reflections, dangerous ideas, morbid thoughts, idle musings, or provocations.

Those who had to suffer through watching a movie with the late SupMarcos can tell you that it was intolerable. The truth is he was intolerable in various respects, but for now I’m talking about watching movies. Any time a firearm appeared onscreen he’d hit pause and launch into a long and pointless discussion about trajectory, distance, force, firepower, and the various shorter or longer geometric curves a projectile could take en route to its “objective.” During that pause he didn’t care how the plot was going to play out, or if other viewers were anxious to know if the hero (or the heroine, musn’t forget gender equity) would be saved; he’d just delve into his hopelessly erudite explanations: “that one is a M-16 rifle, NATO 5.56-caliber—named as such to differentiate between munitions manufactured in countries belonging to NATO versus those of the Warsaw Pact, etc. etc.” The rest of the movie-watchers never knew what to do: if they showed interest, he might go on even longer; if they looked disengaged, he might think he hadn’t been sufficiently clear and thus expound further, always eventually ending up, of course, at the Cold War. At that point SupMarcos would always feel obliged to explain that the term “cold war” was an oxymoron, the system’s way to hide the death and destruction that characterized that period. From there he would delve into the “fourth world war” and on and on until the popcorn got cold and turned into mush with hot sauce.

(Continuar leyendo…)

300
Part III:
A Challenge, Real Autonomy, An Answer, Multiple Proposals, and a Few Anecdotes about the Number 300

So what’s next?

We’ll have to swim against the current, but that’s nothing new for us Zapatistas.

We want to reiterate—and we have consulted this with the Zapatista communities—that we oppose any and every overseer. We’re not just talking about those who insist they will administrate properly and repress correctly—as in the current proposal to combat corruption and improve security via impunity—but also those whose intentions for hegemony and imposed homogeneity lie just below their vanguardist dreams.

We will not exchange our history, our pain, our rage, and our struggle for a “progressive” conformity which is currently closing ranks behind its leader. We don’t forget, even when everybody else does, that we are Zapatistas.

With regard to our autonomy and the discussion that’s going on about whether it will be recognized or not, we make the following distinction: there is official autonomy, and there is real autonomy. Official autonomy is recognized by law, and this is its logic: “If you have an autonomous system and I legally recognize it, then your autonomy begins to depend on my law and not on your actual autonomous practices. When election season rolls around, you’ll have to support us, voting and promoting the vote for our party, because if another party takes office they’ll undo that law that protects you.” In that logic, we become political party peons, just as has happened to social movements all over the world. The actual function and defense of autonomy ceases to matter; the only thing that matters is what is recognized by the law. The struggle for freedom is in effect transformed into a struggle for the legal recognition of struggle.

-*-

We talked to our “bosses,” that is, the communities that determine our path, our route, and our destiny. We see what is coming through their perspective. We asked them: “if we take this position (what we believe is necessary), what will happen?”

And this is how we answered ourselves: “we’ll be alone and isolated in our position. People will say that we’re irrelevant—that we have placed ourselves outside the great revolution, the supposed fourth transformation, this new religion or whatever you want to call it—and we’ll have to swim against the current yet again.”

But being alone and isolated is nothing new for us. Then we asked ourselves: are we afraid to be alone in what we believe? Are we afraid to hold fast to our convictions and to struggle for them? Are we afraid that the people who previously supported us will turn against us? Are we afraid to refuse to give up, give in, or sell out? We asked ourselves each of these questions and we came to the conclusion that what we were asking was if we were afraid to be Zapatistas.

We aren’t afraid to be Zapatistas and that’s exactly what we are going to continue to be. That was what we asked ourselves, and that was our answer.

We think that, alongside all of you (the support networks), and with everything against us—because we know that throughout this process you didn’t have the support of the media or the masses, nor could you count on pay or popularity (we know you had to use your own money to carry out your work)—we organized ourselves around a collective of originary peoples and a small, brown woman, the color of the earth, to denounce a predatory system and defend our conviction and our struggle.
We’re looking for other people who aren’t afraid. That’s why we want to ask you (the support networks), are you afraid? You decide. If you’re afraid, we’ll look somewhere else.

-*-

We think that we should continue to walk closely with the originary peoples.

Maybe some of you as support networks still think that what you’re doing is supporting the originary peoples. As time goes by you’re going to see that it’s just the opposite: they will support you through their experience and their forms of organization. That is, you will learn, because if anyone is an expert in surviving a storm it’s the originary peoples. They’ve had everything thrown at them and here they still are—here we still are.

But we also think, and compañer@s we want to make this very clear: that won’t be enough. We will have to incorporate into our horizon of struggle all of our own realities and the pain and rage they hold. We will have to move toward a new phase of this process: the construction of a Council that includes the struggles of all of the oppressed, marginalized, disappeared, and murdered, the struggles of political prisoners, of women who have been attacked and harassed, of children who have been prostituted, of all the calendars and geographies that delineate a map that is impossible within the laws of probability and illegible to polls and votes: the contemporary map of rebellion and resistance across the planet.

If we—all of us together—are going to challenge the laws of probability that say there is little to no chance that we will succeed, if we are going to challenge the polls and the millions of votes and the world-in-numbers that Power pulls out to try to demoralize us and make us give up, then we have to make the Council [Indigenous Governing Council, CIG] bigger. At this point this is just a thought that we want to share with you—that we think it is important to build a Council that neither absorbs nor annuls differences, but rather gives each of us the chance to be with others [otros, otras, otroas] who share the same struggle. This is why we think the Council should not be limited by a geography imposed by borders and flags, but should aim to become international.

What we are proposing is that the Indigenous Governing Council cease to be only indigenous and only national in scope.

To that end, as Zapatistas we put forward the following proposals, in addition to the ones already suggested during this gathering, to be consulted with all of your home collectives and organizations:

1. To reaffirm our support for the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council.

2. To create and maintain open and transparent forms of communication among all of us who have come together on this path of the Indigenous Governing Council and its spokeswoman.

3. To begin or continue our analysis and evaluation of the reality in which we live, and to share with each other these analyses and evaluations as well as our subsequent proposals for coordinated action.

4. Without ceasing our support for the originary peoples, we propose to double down on the work of the CIG Support Networks in order to open our collective heart to all of the rebellions and resistances that emerge and persevere wherever we might be, in the countryside or the city, without regard for borders.

5. To begin or continue the struggle to grow both the demands and dimensions of the Indigenous Governing Council with the goal of extending it beyond originary peoples to include workers of the countryside and city and all of those who have been discarded or marginalized but who have their own history and struggle, that is, their own identity.

6. To begin or continue the analysis and discussion toward the creation of a Coordination or Federation of Networks which avoids any kind of centralized or vertical command and which spares no effort in building solidarity, support, and sisterhood/brotherhood among its participants.

7. Finally, to hold in December of this year an international gathering of networks—we propose that for now we call ourselves the Network of Resistance and Rebellion (and then the name of each collective), but it could be whatever we decide to name ourselves. At that point we will have had the chance to hear, analyze, and evaluate what the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council decide and propose during their meeting in October, and we will also have the results of the consultation process to be undertaken as a result this meeting we are in right now. We would like to offer one of the Zapatista Caracoles as a location for that upcoming meeting, if you are all in agreement.

Our proposal, then, is not only for the originary peoples, but for everyone [todoas, todas, todos] who resist and rebel in each and every corner of the world, and who challenge every rule, law, mold, dictate, number, and percentage imposed on us.

-*-

First anecdote: During the first days of 1994, the intelligence services of the Mexican army estimated that the self-designated “ee-zee-el-en” consisted of “only” 300 transgressors of the law.
Second anecdote: That same year, as Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León and Esteban Moctezuma Barragán plotted the betrayal and ambush to be carried out against us in February of 1995,i the Nexos group (dedicated at that time to singing the praises of Salinas de Gortari and Zedillo), exclaimed, out of growing frustration and in so many words by Héctor Aguilar Camín, “Why don’t we just obliterate them? There are only 300 of them!”

Third anecdote: Information from the registration table at the Gathering of Support Networks for the CIG and its spokeswoman, held at the Zapatista Caracol “Whirlwind of our Words” August 3-5, 2018: “attendees: 300”.

Fourth anecdote: Profits of the 300 most powerful corporations on the planet: we have no idea, but it could be 300, or any other number, followed by a shitload of zeros, and ending with “millions of dollars”.

Fifth anecdote: “encouraging” quantities and percentages:

The quantitative difference between 300 and 30,113,483 (the number of votes López Obrador the candidate received according to the INE): thirty million, one hundred and thirteen thousand, one hundred and eighty-three.

300 is 0.00099623% of those more than 30 million votes

300 is 0.00052993% of the total votes cast (56,611,027)

300 is 0.00033583% of the total number of registered voters (89,332,032)

300 is 0.00022626% of the total Mexican population (132,593,000, minus the 7 women who, on average, are murdered daily. Over the past decade, a girl, young woman, adult woman, or elderly woman has been murdered, on average, every 4 hours).

300 is 0.00003012% of the population of the American Continent (996,000,000 in 2017)

The probability of destroying the capitalist system is 0.000003929141%, which is the percentage of the world population (7,635,255,247 at 7:54pm on August 20, 2018), represented by the number 300 (that is, of course, if those supposed 300 people don’t give up, give in, or sell out).

Oh I know, not even the tortoise beating Achilles[ii] would be consolation.

What about a caracol?[iii]…

La Bruja Escarlata?[iv]…

The cat-dog?…

All right, enough of that. What keeps us Zapatistas awake is not the challenge presented by this infinitesimal probability of triumph, but the question of what the world that follows, the one that begins to emerge from the still smoking ashes of this system, will be like.

What will be its ways?

Will its colors speak?

What will its theme song be? (Huh? “The Girl with the Red Bow?”[v] No way).

What will be the lineup of Defensa Zapatista’s (finally) full team? Can Esperanza Zapatista’s teddy bear join the lineup and team up with Pedrito? Will they let Pablito wear his cowboy hat and Amado Zapatista, his crocheted helmet? Why doesn’t the damned referee blow his whistle on the Cat-dog who is so obviously off-sides?

Above all, and most importantly, how will that new world dance?

This is why, when we Zapatistas are asked, “What’s next?” Well…how can I explain it? We don’t answer on the spot, it takes us a bit. The truth is, you’ll see, that dancing a new world is less problematic than imagining it.

Sixth anecdote: Oh, you thought the thing about “300”vi was because of the film by that title and the Battle of Thermopylae, and you were ready to get dressed up like Leonidas or Gorgo (to each their own) and start shouting “This is Sparta!” while decimating the “immortal” troops of the Persian King Xerxes? Man, haven’t I been saying? Those Zapatistas, always watching another movie. Or, worse yet, watching and analyzing reality. What can you do…

-*-

That’s all…for now.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.                     Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
Mexico, August of 2018.

300.
Part II:
A Continent as a Backyard, a Country as a Cemetery, Pensamiento Únicoi as a Government Program, and a Small, Very Small, Ever So Small Rebellion.

From our analysis of the world we move to the level of the continent.

If we look above…

We see the examples of Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina, where supposedly progressive governments have not only been removed from power but prosecuted, and the governments that have taken their place are ones that have been trained as good overseers—obedient to capital, that is—ready to take on a realignment of the world plantation (though, to be fair, even in their cynicism they’re still pretty clumsy). Take Temer in Brazil, Macri in Argentina, and that guy in Ecuador who was supposed to be good because he was chosen by the now-persecuted Correa (a man of the “citizen’s revolution”, “a leftist” according to the progressive intelligentsia who backed him) but who, it turns out, is actually on the right: Lenin Moreno (yeah, paradoxically his name is Lenin).

Under the watchful eye of the State that has become the policeman of the region—Colombia—threats are issued, destabilization efforts are undertaken and plans are made for provocations that would justify “peace force” invasions. In all of South America, we see a return to the brutal times of the Colonies, now characterized by a “new” extractivism—really just the same ancestral plunder of natural resources, categorized as “raw materials”—but endorsed and promoted among the progressive governments of the region as “Left extractivism”. This is supposed to be something like a Leftist capitalism or a capitalist Left, or who knows what it’s supposed to be because it destroys and dispossesses just the same, only it’s for a “good cause” (??). Any criticism or movement that opposes the destruction of the originary peoples’ territories is written off as having been “promoted by Empire” or “backed by the right-wing”, among other equivalents to being “a conspiracy by the mafia of Power.” In sum, the “backyard” of Capital extends across the continent all the way to Cape Horn.

But if we look below…

We see resistances and rebellions, first and foremost among the originary peoples. It would be unfair to try to name them all since there’s always a risk of leaving some out, but their identities are clear in their struggles. There where the machine encounters resistance to its predatory advance, rebellion dresses in colors so old they’re new again and speaks “strange” languages. Displacement, also disguised as the leasing of lands, tries to impose its commodity logic on those who refer to the Earth as “Mother.” These resistances are accompanied by groups, collectives, and organizations which, while perhaps not themselves composed of originary peoples, share the same effort and the same destiny, that is to say, the same heart. That is why they suffer insults, persecution, imprisonment and, not infrequently, death.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Words of the EZLN’s Sixth Commission at the Gathering of Support Networks for the Indigenous Governing Council (CIG) and its spokeswoman

(Expanded version)

Given time restrictions, we were unable to present these thoughts in full during the gathering. We promised you the full version, and we include the full transcription here, including the parts that were not read at the gathering. You’re welcome. Don’t mention it.

300
Part I:
A Plantation, a World, a War, Slim Chances.

August, 2018.

Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano:

Good morning, thank you for coming, for accepting our invitation and for sharing your words with us.

We are going to begin by explaining our way of doing analysis and evaluation.

We start by analyzing what is happening in the world, then move to what is happening at the continental level, then to what is happening in this country, then to a regional and finally to a local level. From there, we develop an initiative and begin to move back up from a local level to a regional level, then to the national, the continental, and finally the global level.

We think that capitalism is the dominant system at the global level. In order to explain this system both to ourselves and to others, we use the image of a plantation. I’m going to ask Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés to explain this part.

-*-

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés:

Compañeros and compañeras: we interviewed our own compañeros and compañeras who are our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, some of whom are still alive. The following is what they told us and what they helped us understand: how the rich, the capitalists, want to turn the whole world into their plantation.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

Palabras de la Comandancia General del EZLN en voz del Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés y del Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano, durante la plenaria del Encuentro de Redes de Apoyo al Concejo Indígena de Gobierno, el 5 de agosto de 2018 en el Caracol de Morelia, Chiapas.

Audio: (Descarga aquí)  

Video: Tercios Compas
Audio: Café Zapata Vive

Sorry, this entry is only available in Mexican Spanish. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.

(Debido a fallas en nuestro audio, no hemos podido subir el mensaje que enviaron las compañeras zapatistas el Encuentro de Mujeres el pasado 29 de julio. A partir de audios que subieron páginas amigas, transcribimos el mensaje zapatista. Colectivo RZ).

Mensaje de las mujeres bases de apoyo zapatistas el Encuentro de Mujeres que se realizó en la comunidad indígena Hñähñu de San Lorenzo Nenamicoyan, Estado de México, los días 28 y 29 de julio de 2018

A las Mujeres del Congreso Nacional Indígena
Del Concejo Indígena de Gobierno
A Mujeres del Encuentro de Mujeres

Reciban un saludo revolucionario a nombre de las compañeras bases de apoyo zapatistas. Nos da mucho gusto escuchar que ustedes organizaron un Encuentro de Mujeres, que no dependieron de los hombres. Es así que debemos conquistar nuestro derecho como mujeres, donde tengamos espacio para luchar contra el capitalismo patriarcal, escuchar diferentes formas organizándonos en las reuniones, asambleas, con conciencia y valor. Que nosotras, las mujeres, sí podemos hacer los trabajos de diferentes formas, como en la salud, educación, producción, tercias, medias, justicia, radios comunitarias, en las artes y también como gobernamos en las juntas de buen gobierno, en los MAREZ y autoridades locales de los tres niveles autónomos.

Todo eso no ha sido tan fácil porque no tenemos manual, sino en las prácticas ahí fuimos aprendiendo como en los trabajos que se necesitan. Aunque con errores, ahí fuimos corrigiéndonos. No por eso dejamos de luchar. También estamos vigilándonos en todas las áreas del trabajo que ejercemos en la autonomía y educamos a nuestros jóvenas y jóvenes a que tengan una vida mejor, su libertad para luchar contra el pinche sistema capitalista patriarcal.

Nosotras, como mujeres, no somos objetos para ellos. Tampoco mercancías ni limosneras. No pensemos que alguien nos viene a dar el cambio, sino que nosotras tenemos que hacer el cambio, organizándonos desde abajo con los millones de mexicanas y mexicanos que ¿a poco se conforman con la situación en que están? (…) La esperanza, compañeras, que sigamos luchando y organizándonos. Que no sea la primera ni la última vez que organizan este encuentro porque es necesario compartir sus experiencias de lucha. Así como nosotras llevamos 24 años de lucha y nos falta mucho para hacer y aprender organizándonos, como ya dijimos que no tenemos libros o manual para diario, sino conforme a los pasos, vamos tejiendo nuestras experiencias y rescatando nuestra sabiduría como pueblos originarios.

Ánimo, pues, compañeras. No dejemos de luchar. Ganaremos en conquistar nuestros derechos como mujeres, la igualdad y la libertad junto con nuestros compañeros. Vamos adelante.

29 de julio del 2018
¡Vivan las mujeres del Congreso Nacional Indígena!
¡Vivan las mujeres del Concejo Indígena de Gobierno!
¡Vivan las mujeres que participan en el Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres!

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Mexico

To the People of Mexico:
To the People and Governments of the World:
To the Free, Alternative, Autonomous, or whatever they’re called Media:
To the National and International Sixth:
To the National Indigenous Congress and the Indigenous Governing Council:
To the National and International Press:

July 17th, 2018.

Since yesterday and during today, media has been running a story backed by declarations of Mister Alejandro Solalinde (who presents himself as a presbyter, priest, clergyman or however its said, christian, catholic, Roman Apostolic), of a supposed approach between EZLN and Mister Andrés Manuel López Obrador and that “the EZLN already agreed to have a first dialogue” (textual words by Mister Solalinde).

About this lie EZLN declares:

First: The CCRI-CG of EZLN, the political, organizational and military directorate of EZLN, hasn’t agreed to a first dialogue with anyone. As its well know by whoever has the minimum knowledge of EZLN and its ways, a matter like this would have been made public well in advance.

Second: EZLN hasn’t received from Mister Solalinde anything but lies, insults, libel and racist and sexist comments, by assuming just like it was done during the days of Salinismo and Zedillismo, that we are poor ignorant indigenous manipulated by the -quoting his own words- “Caxlanes who administer Zapatismo” that don’t allow us to look down and kneel to the mister whose Solalinde considers the new savior.

Third: We understand Solalinde’s need to be on the spotlight and his demand for our submissiveness, but he is wrong about EZLN’s Zapatismo. Not only he is wrong about that. We don’t know much about it, but it seems like one of the church commandments to whom Mister Solalinde supposedly serves, which goes: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour, and you won’t lie”.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Convocation to a Gathering of Support Networks for the Indigenous Governing Council; to CompARTE[i]  2018, “For Life and Freedom”; and to the Fifteenth Anniversary Event of the Zapatista Caracoles entitled, “Píntale Caracolitos a los malos gobiernos pasados, presentes y futuros” [ii]

July, 2018.

To the individuals, groups, collectives and organizations of the Support Networks for the Indigenous Governing Council:

To the National and International Sixth:

First and last point:

The Grand Finale.

You arrive at the grand stadium. “Monumental,” “colossal,” “an architectonic marvel,” “the concrete giant”—these and similar descriptors roll off the lips of TV broadcasters who, despite the different realities that they describe, all highlight the enormously proud structure.

To get to the magnificent building, you’ve had to wade through rubble, cadavers, and filth. Older folks say that it wasn’t always like this, that it used to be that homes, neighborhoods, businesses, and buildings were erected around the great sporting hub. Rivers of people would rush all the way up to the gigantic entrance, which only opened once in a while and on whose threshold was inscribed, “Welcome [Bienvenido] to the Supreme Game.” Yes, “bienvenido” in the masculine, as if what occurred inside was exclusively a men’s affair, as used to be the case with public bathrooms, bars, the machinery and tools sections of hardware stores…and, of course, soccer.

(Continuar leyendo…)