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Words of Compañera Lizbeth, Zapatista base of support77

Good evening compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters.

We are going to explain a little bit of how we have been living and doing our autonomous work after the 1994 armed uprising.

We as Zapatista youth today, we are no longer familiar with the overseer, with the landowner, with the hacienda boss, much less with El Amate [a prison in Chiapas]; we do not know what it is to go to the official municipal presidents so that they can resolve our problems. Thanks to the EZLN organization, we now have our own authorities in each community, we have our municipal authorities, and our Juntas de Buen Gobierno [Good Government Councils], and they resolve whatever type of problem that might arise for a compañera or compañero, for both Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Good evening compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters.

I’m going to explain a little bit of what compañera Comandanta Rosalinda said.

Just as she explained, it is now my turn to talk about how we become authorities. From 1994 on, we knew that we had rights as women. That was when we woke up. This is how little by little we grew to understand the work of the compañeras.

In the communities, in the regions, we began the practice of organizing ourselves to fight for the good of the community, without having to have an education to do so.

In 1994, we realized that as women, as mothers and fathers, we had the courage to send our husbands, our sons, our daughters to fight, and we knew well that to confront the enemy is not easy and one can come back alive or dead. But we never dwelled on those things. We were clear that the women had the responsibility to raise whomever of our sons and daughters were left. This is when we understood that we thought the same way as the compañeros.

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Good evening compañeros and compañeras, brothers and sisters.

What compañera Comandanta Miriam just explained is all true. We were poorly treated, humiliated, and unappreciated because we never knew that yes, we did have the right to organize, to participate, to do all types of work; this is because no one had given us an explanation of how we could organize to get out of this exploitation.

At that time we were all in the dark, we didn’t know anything. But during the time of clandestinity, there came a day when some compañeras were recruited, and they went on to recruit other compañeras village by village.

Then came the time to name a compañera to be the local authority for each community. They named me as a local authority of my community. That is when I started going to meetings in order to bring more information back to the community. Later on we held meetings with the compañeras in the village to explain to them how the collective work could be organized, and to also to explain to them that its necessary to have compañeras who are insurgents and milicianas.^[i]

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Comandanta Miriam

Good evening compañeros and compañeras.

I also have the chance to talk to you a bit about what the situation was for women prior to 1994.

Women suffered through a very sad situation since the arrival of the conquistadors. They stole our land and took our language, our culture. This is how the domination of caciquismo [local despotism] and landowners came into being alongside a triple exploitation, humiliation, discrimination, marginalization, mistreatment, and inequality.

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Words by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

May 7, 2015 (evening session)

Good evening, compañeros, compañeras, brothers and sisters.

It seems like a splash of cold water on our faces was indeed what we needed, because now we are definitely getting some thought-provoking ideas.

So we will need to translate this from Spanish to Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tzotzil, and Chol, and from there a joint response will arise, because there are some things proposed by the compañeros at this table that we are interested in discussing.

We continue with our words of explanation and discussion on what resistance and rebellion mean to us as Zapatistas.

For us, as an organization that resists and struggles in rebellion, we first need to be clear on why one would resist and rebel. If we are not clear on the “Why?” the “For what?” and the “From what?” we simply cannot go forward.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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Words of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés
May 6, 2015

Good afternoon, compañeros, compañeras, brothers and sisters.

I am going to talk to you about how our resistance and rebellion are our weapons.

Before we begin talking about resistance and rebellion, I want to remind you that we are an armed group. We have our weapons, as one more tool in the struggle, that’s how we explain it now. Our weapons are a tool of struggle, just like the machete, axe, hammer, pick, shovel, hoe, and other such things. Each of these tools has its function, but the function of a weapon, well, if you use it, you kill.

So in the beginning, when we rose up at the dawn of the year 1994, a movement of thousands of Mexicans from all over the country emerged, grew to millions, and pressured the government, the baldy—that’s what we call him, Salinas the baldy—to sit down and dialogue with us, and at the same time urged us to sit down to dialogue and negotiate.

We understood the call of the people of Mexico. So we gave the order to retreat from violent struggle. It was then that we discovered, through the compañeras—because in combat our people died—but the compañeras were developing what we might call another way to struggle. Because the government, a month later, a year, two years later, wanted to buy us off, as we put it, they wanted us to accept aid and forget about struggle.

(Continuar leyendo…)

See also: Full coverage of the Seminar “Critical Thought vs. the Capitalist Hydra”

Political Economy from the Zapatista Communities II
Words by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. 5 May 2015

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Good afternoon to everyone, compañeras, compañeros, brothers and sisters.

In response to what we have been listening to yesterday, and the day before, we have been commenting in the commission of compañeros and compañeras of the CCRI, that it seems to us that you can see there what it is that we want to do. This is the reason all of us are here, and if we haven’t been dreaming or sleeping, then we are thinking about the things that we have discussed, what the compas and brothers and sisters already brought up and talked about. They have already told us a lot about what this hydra is. So the question is what do we need to do against it?

Organize ourselves. When we give this response, organize ourselves, it means that our brain is already telling us what must be done first, and then second, and third, and fourth, and so on. And so, it’s an idea, when it is in your head it is an idea. Now, when you move your tongue, then it is in your words. What is still missing is action, that is, to organize. Now when you are organizing yourselves, watch out, because it isn’t going to come out like you thought in the idea, or like you said in the word. You are going to begin to encounter a lot of barriers, a lot of challenges.

(Continuar leyendo…)

Words by Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés (4 May 2015)
Seminar “Critical Thought vs. the Capitalist Hydra”

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Good afternoon compañeros, compañeras.

What I’m going to talk to you about—not read to you—has to do with what the economy was like and is like in the communities, that is, I’m going to talk to you about capitalism. I’m going to talk to you about how it was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and in these past few years. I’m going to speak to you about this in three parts: how the communities lived before, 30 years ago; how those who are not organized as Zapatistas live today; and then about how we live, we the Zapatistas of today.

This isn’t to say that we don’t know how it was centuries ago; we do know. But we want to demarcate things from here because we are 30 years old—starting from ’83, the year 1983 when the group of compañeros arrived, and so from that date to now, we are 30 years old.

(Continuar leyendo…)

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ON THE ELECTIONS: ORGANIZE.

April 2015

To the compas of the Sixth:

To those who are reading because it interests them, even though they’re not part of the Sixth:

These days, every time that this thing they call the “electoral process” happens, we hear and see the stuff that comes out saying that the EZLN calls for abstention, that the EZLN says that people shouldn’t vote. They say this and other idiocies, these big-headed people who don’t study history or even try to understand. And they even put these absurdities into history books and biographies, and then charge for them. That is to say, they charge for these lies. Like politicians.

Of course, you know that we’re not interested in these things that those above make up in order to try to convince those below that they’re concerned about them.

(Continuar leyendo…)

The Crack in the Wall.
First Note on Zapatista Method.

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May 3, 2015.

Good afternoon, good day, good night to all listening and reading, no matter your calendars and geographies.

My name is Galeano, Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano. I was born in the small hours of the morning on May 25, 2014, collectively and quite in spite of myself, and well, in spite of others also.[i] Like the rest of my Zapatista compañeras and compañeros, I cover my face whenever it is necessary that I show myself, and I take the cover off whenever I need to hide. Although I am not yet one year old, the authorities have assigned me the task of posta, of watchman or sentinel, at one of the observation posts in this rebel territory.

(Continuar leyendo…)