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¿Es posible un público cinéfilo más numeroso, más atento, más entusiasta? No sabemos exactamente cuántos zapatistas están presentes en el festival de cine Puy ta Cuxlejaltic, convocado por el EZLN, que se celebra del 1 al 9 de noviembre en el caracol de Oventic, Los Altos de Chiapas. El Sup Galeano anunció unos 4 mil, y puesto que entre los dos auditorios caben 3 mil 800, y ambos están llenos, hay que creerle al Sup (de por sí, pues no tiene la costumbre de mentir, a menos que esté disputando mantecadas –su talón de Aquiles– con los niños zapatistas… pero esa es otra historia). Lo que sí sabemos es que mujeres y hombres, niñas y niños zapatistas de todas las edades, asisten con un interés ejemplar las muchas películas presentadas, que de alguna forma se entretejen con su propia experiencia y su propia lucha.

Este segundo día del festival inició con una serie de documentales producidos por los “Tercios compas”. Los Tercios compas nacieron en 2014 ante la necesidad de tener información y análisis verídicos en las comunidades zapatistas. Se trata de un gran colectivo de comunicadoras y comunicadores zapatistas que están rompiendo el cerco informativo y produciendo materiales para las propias comunidades.

Después se presentó el documental Semillas de Guamúchil, con dirección de Carolina Corral. El documental surge a partir de una investigación realizada por la antropóloga Rosalva Aída Hernández con mujeres reclusas del penal Atlacholoaya, en Morelos. El proyecto resultó en el libro Bajo la sombra del guamúchil: Historias de vida de mujeres indígenas y campesinas en prisión (lee o descarga aquí), la conformación de la Colectiva Editorial Hermanas en la Sombra, una serie radiofónica y este documental.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Las luces se apagaron en el gran Cine Comandanta Ramona en las montañas del sureste mexicano, y más de mil veladoras se prendieron. Acabábamos de asistir al estreno de Roma, la nueva película de Alfonso Cuarón, ante un público de casi 2 mil zapatistas, este primer día del festival de cine “Puy ta cuxlejaltic” (“Caracol de nuestra vida”), que se realiza del 1 al 9 de enero en el Caracol de Oventic, Los Altos de Chiapas.

La larga fila de veladoras salió del auditorio y se dirigió hacia el enorme altar de muertos instalado en el templete de la explanada del caracol. Así, en la oscuridad de la noche, el respeto y el cariño llamaron a los muertos –a los muertos caídos en combate el 1 de enero de 1994, a los muertos en el transcurso de estos 25 años de lucha, a los muertos caídos en Nepantla en febrero de 1974–. Los zapatistas saben de muertos. Pero también de vida, y hoy, este 1 de enero, los muertos regresaron para poblar los corazones, para reavivar la memoria.

Este primer día del festival “Puy ta cuxlejaltic” comenzó y terminó con la memoria. El Primer Encuentro Internacional Político, Artístico, Deportivo y Cultural de Mujeres que Luchan estuvo presente con el documental Las mujeres que luchan, con dirección de Rocío Martínez Ts’ujul.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Fuente: Enlace Zapatista

Comisión Sexta del EZLN.
México.

Octubre del 2018.

Programa de exhibiciones en el festival de cine “Puy ta Cuxlejaltic”

Atención: Por causas de fuerza menor, las fechas de este primer festival se extienden hasta el 9 de noviembre inclusive.

Se exhibirán los siguientes filmes (en su categoría respectiva):

Categoría Ah, ¿te cae?

Sección Especial: “Una colonia ciudadana en las montañas del sureste mexicano”.

Roma. Dirección: Alfonso Cuarón.

Categoría Caer y levantarse:

Bayoneta. Dirección: Kyzza Terrazas.

Rudo y Cursi. Dirección: Carlos Cuarón.

Batallas Íntimas. Dirección: Lucía Gajá.

No les pedimos un viaje a la luna. Dirección: María del Carmen de Lara.

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Joint Communique from the CNI, CIG, and EZLN Rejecting the NAIM (New International Airport of Mexico) and Voicing Support for and Solidarity with Migrant Populations

October 26, 2018

To the People of Mexico:
To the People of the World:
To the National and International Sixth:
To the CIG Support Networks:

The peoples, nations, tribes, and barrios of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN) respectfully address the Mexican people and the originary peoples and campesinos who wage dignified resistance against the death-driven megaproject called the New International Airport of Mexico (NAIM). These peoples have sustained hope without giving up, giving in, or selling out, and they are a light for all of us who dream of and work to build justice.

We also respectfully address those who have been forced to seek in other lands what was stolen from them in their own geographies; those who migrate in search of life, as well as those who, without self-interest and in their own ways, times, and means, support those migrants.

-*-

We have seen, lived, and closely followed the struggle of the peoples of the Texcoco Lake and the surrounding areas. We have witnessed their determination, dignity and pain, which have also been ours. We have not forgotten the repression in May 2006 which included sexual torture; the unjust imprisonment of compañeros and compañeras of the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (People’s Front in Defense of the Land) and of the national and international Sixth; and the murder of our compañero Ollin Alexis Benhumea and 14-year-old Francisco Javier Cortés Santiago. Vicente Fox and Enrique Peña Nieto gave the order for this repression with the full approval of the entire political spectrum from above, including those who today claim to represent “change.”

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

Listen here (in Spanish): (Descarga aquí)  

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.)

Listen here (in Spanish): (Descarga aquí)  

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.

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…)

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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