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El arte de la organización para hacer posible el arte de la solidaridad.
Koman Ilel. San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. 30 de julio 2016.

(Ve las imágenes y escucha los audios de la participación zapatista en el CompARTE aquí: https://radiozapatista.org/?p=17050)

El arte se instala en Oventic

Si las múltiples manifestaciones artísticas a lo largo de la semana en CIDECI sorprendieron por su diversidad y su cantidad, de l@s compas zapatistas no se esperaba menos. Decenas de actuaciones que abarcaron todas las artes deleitaron las miradas de tod@s l@s presentes: teatro, música, baile, pintura, poesía… Cient@s de zapatistas de los pueblos originarios tzotzil, zoque y tzeltal de Los Altos de Chiapas compartieron durante todo el día sus creaciones, todas ellas muy vinculadas a la historia de Chiapas, a la lucha zapatista, a las luchas del pueblo mexicano organizado y a valores como la autonomía, la libertad, la justicia y la dignidad.

(Continuar leyendo…)

WORDS OF THE GENERAL COMMAND OF THE EZLN, IN THE VOICE OF SUBCOMANDANTE INSURGENTE MOISÉS, AT THE OPENING OF THE ZAPATISTAS’ PARTICIPATION IN CompARTE, CARACOL OF OVENTIK, CHIAPAS, MEXICO, MORNING OF JULY 29, 2016.

Listen (in Spanish): (Descarga aquí)  

In the name of the compañeras and compañeros bases of support of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, I want to tell you how we feel about the things that they do to us as originary peoples of Mexico. I think it is the same all across the world.

We want to tell you, explain to you once again, how much suffering this rotten capitalist system has caused us.

Don’t feel bad, compañeras and compañeros from the national and international Sixth, brothers and sisters of the world, about everything that I am about to tell you because it isn’t about you. It’s about what the capitalist system does to us and the conditions that it forces on us, especially those of us who are ORIGINARY PEOPLES in this country called Mexico.

I am going to talk about how we Zapatista men and women feel about what they did to our indigenous brothers and sisters from the town of San Juan Chamula, on June 23 of this year.

What happened there pains us as Zapatistas.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico.

July 26, 2016

To the participants and attendees of CompArte:
To the National and International Sixth:

Compañeros, compañeras, compañeroas:

Although we could not replace the money that had been allocated for food and transportation for our artistic community, as Zapatistas we sought a way not only to reciprocate the efforts of the artists who responded to our invitation to CompArte, but also to make them feel the respect and admiration their artistic work inspires in us.

We would like to inform you of the decision that we have come to:

We will present, though in different calendars and geographies, some of the artistic work that we Zapatistas prepared for you. The presentations will take place according to the following schedule:

Caracol of Oventik: July 29, 2016, from 10:00 national time to 19:00 national time. Participation by Zapatista artists of the Tzotzil, Zoque, and Tzeltal originary peoples from Los Altos in Chiapas.

CIDECI, San Cristóbal de Las Casas: July 30, 2016. A Zapatista delegation will attend CompArte as listener-viewers.

Caracol of La Realidad: August 3, 2016, from 09:00 on August 3 through the early morning hours of August 4. Participation by Zapatista artists of the Tojolabal, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Mame originary peoples as well as mestizos from the Selva Fronteriza zone.

Caracol of La Garrucha: August 6, 2016, from 09:00 on August 6 through the early morning hours of August 7. Participation by Zapatista artists of the Tzeltal and Tzotzil originary peoples from the Selva Tzeltal zone. (Continuar leyendo…)

The geography? Oventik.
The calendar? July 29, 2016.

ZAPATISTA ARMY OF NATIONAL LIBERATION
MEXICO

July 17, 2016

To all the artists participating in the CompArte:
To the National and International Sixth:

Sisters and brothers:
Compañeras, compañeros, and compañeroas:

We send our greetings. We are writing to let you know the following:

We want to make sure that all of the artists who have committed to participating in CompArte know and feel our admiration and respect. But also, and above all, we want them to know of our conviction that in the dark hours of the present and the dark hours to come, their work and creativity will be required to find the path that we, humanity as a whole, want, need, and deserve.

When we speak of darkness, we are not only referring to the horrors that emerge and destroy all across the suffering world geography. We are also talking about the political and economic mercantilism that, without really caring much about the actual deaths and tragedies, pounce on the still-warm cadavers of the victims in an attempt to take advantage of and profit off their misfortune.

If the machine imposes a perverse logic in which every tragedy numbs rather than enrages, perhaps it could be the Arts that remind humanity that people not only kill and destroy, impose and dominate, humiliate and doom to oblivion, but can also create, liberate, and remember. Don’t even the most heartbreaking and painful artistic works throb with life and liberty?

(Continuar leyendo…)

July 2016

To the maestras [female teachers] of the teachers in resistance:

To the national and international Sixth:

To the attendees and participants of the CompArte all over the world:

Compas, hermanoas,[i] etcéteras:

We send you all [todas, todoas, todos] our greetings and respect. We hope that your health is good and your spirits high.

We are writing to send you a few videos of the contributions that the Zapatista bases of support had prepared for the CompArte. For now we are including two videos dedicated to women below and to the left, and especially to the maestras in struggle. Here goes:

_*_

“TO DANCE A THOUGHT”

This first video that we will show you is from the Caracol of La Garrucha. It a bailable [choreographed dance] entitled “The Rights of Women.” As is the case with almost everything here, it was prepared collectively by men and women, young people trained in the Zapatista autonomous education system. Zapatista bases of support wrote it, practiced it, and prepared to present it at the CompArte. The MC [maestra or master of ceremonies] explains everything. If you end up repeating the chorus, that’s to be expected. But we can tell you one thing: when you are capable of, as the compañera MC says, “singing a thought,” then perhaps you will have to rethink the idea that Art only comes from above, while below what we have are “crafts” [artesanías].

(Continuar leyendo…)

San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

July 8, 2016

To all of the artists participating and attending CompARTE:

To the national and international Sixth:

Brothers and sisters:

We send you fraternal greetings on behalf of all of those who make up CIDECI-Unitierra.

With regard to the celebration of the CompArte Festival convoked by our compañer@s of the EZLN, and convinced also that “the arts are a hope for humanity… [and] that in the most difficult moments, when disillusionment and impotence are at a peak, the Arts are the only thing capable of celebrating humanity” (EZLN Communique, 7/6/2016), we want to inform you that we are continuing preparations to celebrate this sharing-exchange from July 23 through July 30. Our CIDECI-Unitierra community will keep its doors open to receive all of the persons, communities, and collectives that have felt in their hearts this call to come share experiences of art, struggle, and resistance.

As of the initial CompArte convocation, we have been happy to be able to offer our grain of sand to this celebration. You can count on us to put all of our efforts into making you feel as welcome as possible. We await you here.

Chin up!

CIDECI-Unitierra

P.S. 1. All previously registered participants and attendees can collect their accreditation in CIDECI-Unitierra as of July 18, from 10am to 8pm.

P.S. 2. Anyone not yet registered can register directly at CIDECI-Unitierra, also between 10am and 8pm.

The CompARTE Festival and Solidarity

July 2016

Compañeroas of the Sixth:

Artists from the five continents:

Teachers in Resistance:

As you know, we have decided to suspend our participation in the CompArte Festival. Of course, for those who know how to read carefully, we didn’t say that the festival itself was suspended. We merely indicated that we as Zapatistas would not be able to contribute. So if someone thought the former and decides not to participate, well then we apologize because we know you already took on expenses. No one should give orders to the Arts. If there is a synonym for freedom, perhaps the last bastion of humanity in the worst situations, it is the arts. We Zapatistas neither can nor should—nor has it even crossed our minds—to tell the workers of art and culture when they should create or not. Or worse, impose a topic on them and, using the originary peoples in rebellion as justification, drag out concepts of “cultural revolutions,” “realisms,” and other arbitrary notions that merely hide what is some kind of cop determining what is “good art” or not.

No, artist sisters and brothers [hermanas, hermanos, hermanoas]; for us Zapatistas, the arts are the hope of humanity, not a militant cell. We think that indeed, in the most difficult moments, when disillusionment and impotence are at a peak, the Arts are the only thing capable of celebrating humanity.

For us Zapatistas, you, along with scientists [l@s científic@s], are so important that we cannot imagine a future without your work.

But that is a subject for a later letter.

The task here is to honor a commitment to you all. As of June 15, 2016, the last day for registration, we had a report prepared to let you know how the CompArte Festival was coming. Unfortunately, the national situation got progressively tenser (thanks to the irresponsibility of that child with a box of matches who works out of the SEP [Department of Public Education]), and we kept postponing it until coming to the decision that we have already told you about.

(Continuar leyendo…)

June’s Lessons.

July, 2016

Compañeras, compañeros, compañeroas of the Sixth in Mexico and the World:
Artists of the five continents:
Teachers in rebellion:

We send you all [todos, todas, todoas] greetings, from us and the indigenous Zapatista communities. We are writing this letter to tell you about what we have seen and heard this past month of June and to let you know about a decision we Zapatistas have made. Here goes:

Lessons from Above

In just the last few weeks of June, we have been given a true educational seminar.

Once again, the character of the Mexican state has been laid bare: as soon as the capitalists snapped their fingers, regarding what is called the “Law 3 of 3,” the institutional powers scrambled to correct what didn’t please their masters. Not content merely with knowing that they rule, the great lords of money demonstrated, to anyone who wished to see, who really makes the decisions. A handful of masters, in luxury brand suits and ties, came out to the Ángel de la Independenciai and, to mock its meaning, gave what amounts to a class in modern politics. “We rule,” they said without speaking, “and we do not like that law. We do not need to sacrifice lives, hold marches, or suffer blows, humiliation, or imprisonment. We don’t even need to show ourselves. If we do so now it is only to remind all of the politicians of their place, both those who are in office and those who aspire to be. And for the lumpen, well, this is just to remind them of the contempt we feel for them.” And then the system’s legal structure (and those who create, implement it, and enforce it) showed its true purpose: within just a few hours, the governmental “institutions” fell over themselves apologizing and trying to ease the anger of the gentlemen of money. Like overseers eager to serve their masters, the governing officials prostrated themselves and maneuvered to make the law appropriate to the system’s design. “We didn’t even read it,” the legislators murmured as they expressed reverence and made servile apologies to their masters.

But when the teachers in resistance and the communities, movements, organizations, and persons who support them demanded the repeal of the education reform (really just a presidential pre-campaign platform for Aurelio’s aspirations to be a police informant), the government and its masters declared that nothing (meaning, the use of force) was off the table in order to defend “the rule of law.” With a tone more hysterical than historical, they emphasized that the law would not be negotiated. And they made this declaration just a few hours after they bowed before the powers of money… to negotiate modification of a law.

(Continuar leyendo…)

The Hour of the Policeman 4
From the Cat-Dog’s spoiler notebook

June 2016

Here’s the doubt: what would be the most appropriate comparison for that sad and mediocre overseer who aspires to be a policeman?

Aurelio Donald Nuño Trump?

Aurelio Ramsay Nuño Bolton?

We think that, given his thirst for blood and his cowardice, the latter fits him best.

And, just like in the television series “Game of Thrones,” where Ramsay Bolton is devoured by the dogs that he before used to attack others, the paid media that have used Nuño to slander, threaten, and attack the teachers in resistance and the communities and organizations in solidarity, will feed on him when he falls.

It could very well be said to him tomorrow:

“Your words will disappear.
Your house will disappear
Your name will disappear
All memory of you will disappear.”
To him and the entire system he serves.

Time will tell.
Woof-meow.

FROM WITHIN THE STORM

Joint Communique from the National Indigenous Congress and the EZLN on the cowardly police attack against the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers and the indigenous community of Nochixtlán, Oaxaca.

June 20, 2016

To the People of Mexico:

To the peoples of the World:

Faced with the cowardly repressive attack suffered by the teachers and the community in Nochixtlán, Oaxaca—in which the Mexican state reminds us that this is a war on all—the peoples, nations, and tribes who make up the National Indigenous Congress and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation say to the dignified teachers that they are not alone, that we know that reason and truth are on their side, that the collective dignity from which they speak their resistance is unbreakable, and that this the principal weapon of those of us below.

We condemn the escalation of repression with which the neoliberal capitalist reform, supposedly about “education,” is being imposed across the entire country and principally in the states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, and Michoacán. With threats, persecutions, beatings, unjust imprisonments and now murders they try to break the dignity of the teachers in rebellion.

We call on our peoples and on civil society in general to be with the teachers who resist at all times, to recognize ourselves in them. The violence used to dispossess them of their basic work benefits with the goal of privatizing education is a reflection of the violence with which the originary peoples and rural and urban peoples are dispossessed.

Those who delight in power decided that education, health, indigenous and campesino territories, and even peace and security are a commodity for whoever can pay for them, that rights are not rights but rather products and services to be snatched away, and they dispossess, destroy, and negotiate according to what big capital dictates. And they intend to impose this aberration through bloody means, murdering and disappearing our compañer@s, sending our spokespeople to high security prisons, making shameless torture into government marketing, and with the help of the paid press, criminalizing the bravest part of Mexican society, that is, those who struggle, who do not give in, who do not sell out, and who do not give up.

We demand a halt to the repression against the teachers in struggle and the immediate and unconditional liberation of ALL political prisoners.

We invite all of the peoples of the countryside and cities to be attentive and in solidarity with the teachers’ struggle, to organize autonomously in order to remain informed and alert in the face of the storm that is upon all of us, knowing that a storm, in addition to its turmoil and chaos, also makes the ground fertile where a new world is always born.

From the mountains, countryside, valleys, canyons, and barrios of the originary peoples, nations, and tribes of Mexico.

Never Again a Mexico Without Us!
National Indigenous Congress
Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Mexico, June 20, 2016