Thank You Part III. The most expensive building in the world.
Thank you Part III:
The Most Expensive Building in the World
Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano.
February-March, 2015
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It is the eve of the big day… in the wee hours of the morning. The cold bites under the cover of shadow. On the solitary table that furnishes this small hut (which has no sign but is known to now be the headquarters of the Zapatista Command), there is a handwritten, wrinkled sheet of paper detailing the accounts for the construction of the clinic-school in the Zapatista community of La Realidad. A voice summarizes the gazes, silences, smoke, rage:
The accounts don’t balance. The life of any Zapatista is worth more than Peña Nieto’s white house and the houses of all of the rich in the whole world combined. The entirety of the funds required to construct the huge buildings where the powerful hide in order to organize their thievery and crimes would not be enough to pay for a even a single drop of Indigenous Zapatista blood. That is why we feel that this is the most expensive building in the world.
So must state clearly that what doesn’t appear in the accounts is the blood of our compañero Galeano. All of the papers in the history of the world would not be enough to balance that account.
And so that is how it should appear in those lists that come out in the press where they name the richest people, and where the poorest live. The rich have first names, last names, lineage, and pedigree. But the poor only have a geography and a calendar. So they should say that the most expensive building on the whole planet is in Zapatista La Realidad, Chiapas, Mexico. And that the Indigenous Zapatista girls and boys attend the most expensive school in the world. And that the men, women, boys, girls, elderly, indigenous, Zapatistas, Mexicans, when they get sick in La Realidad, will be treated in the most expensive clinic on earth.
But the only way to balance these accounts is to struggle to destroy the capitalist system. Not to change it. Not to improve it. Not to make it more human, less cruel, less murderous. No. To destroy it completely. To annihilate each and every one of the heads of the Hydra.
Even then there would be more to do, as what we want here is to construct something better: another system, one without masters, without patrons, without bosses, without injustice, without exploitation, without disrespect, without repression, without dispossession. One without violence against women, children, anyone who is different. One where work is paid justly. One where ignorance does not rule. One where hunger and violent death are just bad memories. One where no one can be above on the backs of others below. One that is reasonable, one that is better.
Then and only then, the Zapatistas can say that the accounts are even.
Thank You Part I.
On Sunday, March 1, 2015, after more than six months of work, the building that houses a health clinic and a school was presented to the Zapatista bases of support of La Realidad. The solidarity of people and collectives throughout the world made this construction possible. Here we present to you the accounts, the words expressed during this event, and some photos from that day.
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Clear accounts and thick pozol:[i]
-Construction began on July 31, 2014. It was finished at the end of February 2015.
-Work days: approximately 2015 compa/work days.
Note from The Tercios Compas[ii] on the compa/work day, abbreviated CWD. CWD is a Zapatista unit of measure that could be thought of as equivalent to Socially Necessary Labor Time (SNLT). However, in addition to the fact that it is not measured in hours, CWD is not a unit of measure of value. CWD is a referent in order to compare the individual and the collective (an individual would have taken almost 7 years to do what a collective did in almost 7 months), and to contrast that which is done below and to the left with that which is done above and to the right (a government from above would have taken 14 years and still wouldn’t have finished the job). For example: with billions in their budget, the Chiapas state government cannot finish building hospitals in Reforma, Yajalón and Tuxtla Gutiérrez. The one in Tuxtla Gutiérrez is just one of the examples that abound of the corruption of the “leftist-PRDista-AMLOista” Juan Sabines Guerrero (who, as his predecessor Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía confessed, created and financed the paramilitary group known as CIOAC-H in Chiapas; the Aryan Velasco carries on those same politics). In 2012, to “inaugurate” the hospital in Tuxtla, they moved equipment there from other hospitals. After that psychopath Calderón and the criminal Sabines cut the ribbon, they dismantled everything. Now it is just a shell (information from “Chiapas Paralelo” chiapasparalelo.com and “Diario Contra Poder” diariaocontrapoderenchiapas.com). The Aryan Velasco hides his patron’s enormous fraud and follows in his footsteps. Meanwhile, the money paid out above is spent on media propaganda, binge parties, decor, and makeup and beauty salons. In addition, of course, to being spent on persecuting the small independent paid media that still exists in the state, and buying silence on social networks. It is one thing to use handouts to corral people into praising the Aryan rancher, and a very different thing to organize in order to build what the people need. More information on the concept of SNLT, in Capital, Volume 1, Section 1, Chapter 1. We don’t remember the author, but he was a Jew, so proceed with caution. More information on the concept of CWD later on. End of the note from the Los Tercios Compas, press that is neither free, nor autonomous, nor alternative, nor independent, but it is compa. Copyright still in process because the Junta de Buen Gobierno told us “more information later on” (sonofa….didn’t I tell you?).
