THEM AND US.
VI.- The Gaze 2.2.- To look and to listen from/toward below.

Can we still choose toward where and from where we look?

We could, for example, look at those who work in supermarket chains, scolding them for their complicity in the electoral fraud[i] and ridiculing them for the orange uniforms they must wear, or, we could look at the employee who, after cashing out…

The cashier takes off her orange apron, grumbling her rage at being accused of complicity in the fraud that brought ignorance and frivolity into Power. A woman, young or old, single or divorced, a widower, a mother, a single mother, an expecting mother, a woman without children, or whatever the case may be. She starts work at 7 in the morning and is let out at 4 in the afternoon, if there are no overtime hours, that is. That’s without counting the time it takes for her to get from home to work and back, and the time she spends afterward on school work or housework, that “women’s-labor-that-one-can-do-with-a-bit-of-flair.” She read this accusation of complicity in one of the magazines beside the cash register. They blame her, who supposedly they are going to save, it’s just a question of a vote and ta-da, happiness. “What, do they think the owners wear the orange apron?” she murmurs, irritated. She fixes herself up a bit from the purposeful disheveledness with which she arrives to work so that the manager doesn’t hit on her. She leaves. Her partner is waiting for her outside. They hug, kiss, touch each other with a gaze, walk together. They enter an internet café or cybercafé or whatever you call it. 10 pesos per hour, 5 for a half hour…

“Half hour,” they say, mentally calculating their budget-transit-time-metro-bus-walk.

“Cover me Roco, don’t be a jerk,” he says.

“Okay, but come mid-month you’d better come by and pay up or the owner will be all over me and it will be you covering me.”

“Fine, I’ll cover you, but it will be when you have a car, man, because I’m working at the car wash.”

“Well wash it then man,” Roco says.

The three of them laugh.

“Number 7,” Roco says.

“Go ahead, look for it,” she says.

He starts to put in a number.

“No,” she says, “look for when this all started.”

They search. They get to where there were just a few more than 131.[ii] They play the video.

“They’re bourgeois” he says.

“Calm yourself, revolutionary vanguard. You’re wrong in the head if you judge people on their appearance, look at how they call me white girl and bourgeois for having light skin, and don’t see that I live paycheck to paycheck. You have to look at what each person does and where they come from, dummy,” she says, giving him a smack upside the head.

They keep watching.

They watch, fall silent, listening.

“Well the fact that they went at him right to his face, to that Peña Nieto… they’re brave, that’s for sure, you can see they’ve got balls.”

“Or ovaries, idiot,” she gives him another smack.

“Keep that up princess, and I’m going to accuse you of interfamilial violence.”

“It would be gender violence, idiot,” and another smack.

They finish watching the video.

Him: “So that’s where things started, with a handful of people who weren’t scared.”

Her: “Or they were scared, but they controlled it.”

“Half hour!” Roco yells.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

She walks out smiling.

“Now what are you laughing at?” he asks.

“Nothing, I was just remembering,” she walks closer to him, “that thing you said about ‘interfamilial.’ Does that mean you want us to be, like they say, a family?”

He doesn’t even skip a beat.

“That’s right my princess, I mean we’re already headed there, that’s what we’re already doing, but without so many smacks on the head, make them kisses instead, lower and to the left.”

“Hey don’t mess with me man!” Another smack. “And enough of this “princess” stuff, aren’t we against the fucking monarchy?”

Expecting an even bigger smack, he says: “Okay then, my… plebian.”

She laughs, and he does too. After a few more steps, she says:

“So you think the Zapatistas will invite us?”

“Definitely, my buddy Vins said he’s buddies with the sockface[iii] because he let him win at Mortal Combat, at the arcades, so we’ll just say we’re Vins’ people and we’re in,” he explains enthusiastically.

“You think I’d be able to take my mother? She’s getting pretty old…”

“Of course, with any luck my future mother-in-law will get stuck in the mud,” he ducks the smack he expects but that doesn’t come.

She’s angry now:

“And what the hell are the Zapatistas going to give us if they’re so far away? What, they’re going to give me a better salary? Make people respect me? Make those fucking men stop looking at my ass in the street? Make the fucking boss stop using any pretext to touch me? Are they going to help me pay my rent? Buy my daughter or my son clothes? Are they going to bring the price down for sugar, beans, rice, oil? Are they going to make sure I have enough to eat? Are they going to confront the police that come every day to the barrio to harass and extort the vendors that sell pirated DVDs telling them that it’s so they don’t have to denounce them to Mr. or Mrs. Sony…?”

“It’s not called ‘piracy,’ it’s ‘alternative production’ my princ… plebian. Don’t get all bent out of shape with me, we’re on the same side.”

But she’s on a roll now and there’s no stopping her:

“And for you, are they going to give your job back at the factory, where you were already certified as whatever-the-hell-it-was? Are they going to make your studies, all your training courses, worth something so that in the end that jackass of a boss takes the business who the hell knows where, along with the union and the strike and everything you did, so that you end up washing cars?” Or what about your buddy El Chompis, they took his job away and disappeared the official employment records so he can’t even defend himself? And the government with its same story about how it’s going to improve service and be world class and all that nonsense, and what about that stuff about lowering rates, now they’re more expensive! And the electricity goes out all the time[iv] and fucking Calderón is going to go give classes on shamelessness to the gringos,[v] who are the real mothers of this mess. And my father, god bless his soul, who went to work on the other side [in the US], not as a tourist but in order to get some bread, some dough, some pay to maintain us when we were still real little, and when he was just crossing the border la migra [immigration agents] grabbed him like he was a terrorist rather than an honest worker and they never even gave us his body back and that fucking Obama whose heart appears to be the color of the dollar.

“Whoa, cool your jets, my plebian,” he says.

“It’s just that every time I even think about it I get angry, so much work and effort so that in the end those above end up with everything, the only thing left is for them to privatize laughter, although that’s not probable because there is so little of it, but maybe they’ll privatize tears, those are abundant, and they’ll get rich… richer. And then you come with this stuff about the Zapatistas this and the Zapatistas that and that below and to the left and that the eighth…”

“The Sixth, not the eighth,” he interrupts her.

“Whatever, if those guys are so far away and speak worse Spanish than you.”

“Hey now, don’t be mean.”

She wipes away her tears and mutters: “Damned rain, it’s ruined my Este Lauder and I had fixed myself up to please you.”

“Ahhh but you please me without anything… especially clothes.”

They laugh.

She says, very serious: “Well, then, tell me, are these Zapatistas going to save us?”

“No my plebian, they’re not going to save us. That, among other things, we’re going to have to do ourselves.”

“So what then?”

“Well, they’re going to teach us.”

“And what are they going to teach us?”

“That’s we’re not alone [solos].”[vi]

She is quiet a moment. Then suddenly:

“Nor alone [solas],[vii] dummy,” another smack.

The minibus is packed. They wait to see if the next one has room.

It is cold, rainy. They hug each other tighter, not to keep from getting wet, but rather to get wet together.

Far away someone waits, there is always someone waiting. And that someone waits, with an old pen and an old tattered notebook, keeping count of the gazes below that see themselves in a window.

(To be continued…)

From whatever corner, of whichever world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January of 2013.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

“Los Nadies,” [the Nobody’s] based on the text by the same name by Eduardo Galeano. Performed by La Gran Orquesta Republicana, ska-fusión band, Mallorca, Spain. Band members include: Javier Vegas, Nacho Vegas: saxophone. Nestor Casas: trumpet. Didac Buscató: trombone. Juan Antonio Molina: electric guitar. Xema Bestard: bass. José Luis García: drums.

Liliana Daunes narrates a very other story called “Always and Never Against Sometimes.” Greetings to the Network of Solidarity with Chiapas that struggles and resists here just a little ways away, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Latin America, Planet Earth.

“Salario Mínimo” (Minimum Wage) Oscar Chávez and Los Morales.

[i] The PRI was accused of buying votes during the presidential campaigns in 2012 with gift cards to the popular chain store Soriana. Many on the institutional left blamed the working class people who used the gift cards for “complicity” with the PRI’s electoral fraud.

[ii] During a speech at the Universidad Iberoamericana during the presidential campaigns, then presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI) was confronted by students protesting events that occurred during his tenure as governor of Mexico State. Peña Nieto hid and eventually fled the University, but party affiliates later dismissed the protesters in the media as a handful of non-student opposition supporters that were sent to disturb the event. Iberoamericana students then made a youtube video in which 131 of them held up their university ID’s and testified to their participation in the protest, sparking the name for a wider student movement “Yosoy#132,” “Iam#132.”

[iii] Sockface is a reference to the ski-mask worn by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

[iv] This is a reference to Calderón shutting down the public electric company Luz y Fuerza del Centro and union-busting the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). The official reason for the shut-down was inefficiency, but people complain that under the private company that took over the service area rates are higher and service worse. The implication is that El Chompis was an electrical worker with Luz y Fuerza.

[v] Ex-president of Mexico Felipe Calderón is slated for a teaching position at Harvard University in the United States.

[vi] The masculine form of “alone.”

[vii] The feminine form of “alone.”

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Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico.
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“Los Nadies”, basada en el texto homónimo de Eduardo Galeano. Interpreta La Gran Orquesta Republicana, banda de ska-fusión, Mallorca, Estado Español. Formada por: Javier Vegas, Nacho Vegas: saxo. Nestor Casas: trompeta. Didac Buscató: trombón. Juan Antonio Molina: guitarra eléctrica. Xema Bestard: bajo. José Luis García: batería.

————————————————————————————–

Liliana Daunes narra un cuento muy otro llamado “Siempre y Nunca contra A Veces”. Saludos a la Red de Solidaridad con Chiapas, que lucha y resiste aquí nomacito, en Buenos Aires, Argentina, Latinoamérica, Planeta Tierra.

————————————————————————–

“Salario Mínimo” Oscar Chávez y Los Morales.

“For once I could say
Without anyone contradicting me
That he who desires something
Is not the same as he who covets it
Just like words said to be heard
Are not the same
As words said to be obeyed
Just as he who speaks to me in order to tell me something
Is not the same as
He who speaks in order to make me be quiet.”

Tomás Segovia.

“Fourth Search” in “Searches and Other Poems”
from the press that has the good taste to call itself “Nameless.”
Thanks and an embrace to María Luísa Capella, to Inés and Francisco
(how good that dignified blood beats in their hearts)
for the books and lyrics guide

To gaze is a form of asking, we say, we the Zapatistas.

Or to search…

When gazing into the calendar and into the geography, however far one may be from the other, one asks, one interrogates.

And it is in this gaze where the other (el otro, la otra lo otro) appears. And it is in this gaze where the other exists, where they draw their profile as strange, as foreign, as enigma, as victim, as judge and executioner, as enemy…or as compañer@.

The gaze is where fear dwells, but it is also where respect can be born.

If we don’t learn to see with the other’s eyes, what sense can our own gaze have? Our questions?

Who are you?

What is your story?

Where is your pain?

When are your hopes?

But it doesn’t only matter at whom or at what you gaze. Also, and above all, it matters from where.

And choosing where to look is also choosing from where one is looking.

Or is it the same to see from above the pain of those who have lost those whom they love and need to senseless, inexplicable, and definitive death, as it is to see all this from below?

When someone from above looks at those below and asks, “how many?” what they are really asking is “how much are they worth?”

And if they aren’t worth anything, what does it matter how many there are? To obscure this inconvenient number, we have the commercial media, the armies, the police, the judges, the prisons, the cemeteries.

And from our gaze, the answers are never simple.

To look at ourselves looking at what we look at gives us an identity that has to do with suffering and struggle, with our calendar and our geography.

Our strength, if we have one, is in this recognition: we are who we are, and there are others who are who they are, and others who we still don’t have the words to name, and are nevertheless who they are. When we say “we” we are not absorbing and, in doing so, subordinating identities, but rather emphasizing the bridges that exist between different sufferings and different rebellions. We are equal because we are different.

In the Sixth, the Zapatistas, reiterate our rejection of any attempt at hegemony, that is, to say, any vanguardism, whether it places us at the forefront or alongside or, as over the course of these long centuries, at the rearguard.

If with the Sixth we search for our kin in sorrows and struggles, regardless of the calendars and geographies that distance us, it is because we know well that that the Ruler cannot be defeated with only one way of thinking, one force, one leadership (however revolutionary, consequential, radical, clever, numerous, powerful, daring, etc. it may be).

We have learned from our dead that diversity and difference are not a weakness for those below, but rather a strength from which to birth, from the ashes of the old, the new world that we want, that we need, that we deserve.

We know well that we are not the only ones who imagine this world. But in our dream, this world is not one, but many different, diverse worlds. And in their diversity lies their strength.

It is the repeated attempts to impose unanimity that have caused the machine to go mad and move closer, by the minute, to the final moment of this civilization as we have known it.

In the current phase of neoliberal globalization, homogeneity is nothing other than mediocrity imposed as universal standard. And if it differs in any way from a Hitlerish madness, it is not in its objective but in the modernized means to achieve it.

-*-

And yes, we are not the only ones who look for the how, the when, the where, the what.

You all, for example, are not Them. Well, although you don’t seem to have any problem allying yourselves with Them in order to…deceive and defeat them from within? To be like Them but not as much as Them? To slow the speed of the machine, to file down the fangs of the beast, to humanize the savage?

Yes, we know. There are many arguments to sustain this line of thinking. In fact, you could even force a few examples.

But…

You tell us that we are equal, that we are trying to do the same thing, that we are in the same struggle, the same enemy… Hmm…no, actually you don’t say “enemy,” you say “adversary.” Agreed, that also depends on the current context.

You say that we must all unite because there is no other path forward: it is either elections or arms. And you, who sustain your project through this false argument to invalidate anything that does not submit to the repeated spectacle of the politics of above, summon us: die or surrender. And you even offer us an pretext, arguing that, since this is about taking Power, there are only these two paths.

Ah! but we are so disobedient: we don’t die, nor do we surrender. And, as was demonstrated on that day of the end of the world: neither electoral struggle nor armed struggle.

And what if it is not about taking Power? Or better: what if Power no longer resides in the Nation-State, that Zombie State populated by a parasitic political class that preys on the remains of the nations?

And if those voters that you are so obsessed with (and hence your fascination with the multitudes), do nothing other than vote for someone who others have already chosen, as has been demonstrated time and time again by They who amuse themselves with each new trick they invent?

Yes, of course, you hide behind your prejudices: those who don’t vote? “it is because they are apathetic, disinterested, uneducated, or because they’re playing to the right”…your ally if found in the many geographies, in more than a few calendars. Those who vote, but not for you? “it is because they are rightwing, ignorant, sell-outs, traitors, lowlifes, because they are zombis!”

Note from Marquitos Spoiler: Yes, we sympathize with the zombies, not only because of our physical resemblance, (even without makeup we would take every spot in the casting of “the Walking Dead”). Also, and above all, because we think, like George A. Romero, that, in a zombie apocalypse, the craziest brutality would be the work of the surviving civilization, not of the walking dead. And if some vestige of humanity survives, it will glow within the pariahs of always, the walking dead for whom the apocalypse begins at birth and never ends. As now occurs in any corner of any of the existing worlds. And there is no film, nor comic, nor television series that acknowledges this.

Your gaze is full of contempt when you look below (even if that is in the mirror), and full of envy when you look above.

You can’t even imagine that someone would have no other interest in looking “above” except to figure out how to get them off our back.

-*-

The gaze. Toward where and from where. That is what separates us.

You believe that you are the only ones, we know that we are just one of many.

You look above, we look below.

You look for ways to make yourselves comfortable; we look for ways to serve.

You look for ways to lead, we look for ways to accompany.

You look at how much you earn, we at how much is lost.

You look for what is, we, for what could be.

You see numbers, we see people.

You calculate statistics, we, histories.

You speak, we listen.

You look at how you look, we look at the gaze.

You look at us and demand to know where we were when your calendar marked your “historic” urgency. We look at you and don’t ask where you’ve been during these more than 500 years of history.

You look to see how you can take advantage of the current conjuncture, we look to see how we can create it.

You concern yourselves with the broken windows, we concern ourselves with the rage that broke it.

You look at the many, we at the few.

You see impassable walls, we see the cracks.

You look at possibilities, we look at what was impossible until the eve of its possibility.

You search for mirrors, we for windows.

You and us are not the same.

-*-

You look at the calendar of above and subordinate to it the spring of mobilizations, the masses, the parties, the multitudinous rebellion, the streets overflowing with songs and colors, slogans, challenges, those who are now many more than one hundred and thirty- some,[i] the packed plazas, the ballot boxes anxious to be filled with votes, and you hurry because it-is-clear that – they lack a – leadership – revolutionary-party-a-politics-of-ample-flexible-alliances-because-the-electoral-is-their-natural-destiny-but-they-are-very-young-bourgeouis-petit-bourgeois-spoiled kids- / -and then – lumpen – barrio – hood – prole – voting-numbers – potentials-ignorant-naïve – clumsy – stubborn, above all, stubborn. And in each mass action you see the culmination of the historic moment. And afterward, when there are no masses clamoring for a leader, nor ballot boxes, nor parties, you decide that it’s over, no more, that maybe on another occasion, that we have to wait six years, six centuries, that we have to look elsewhere, but always to the calendar of above: party registration, political alliances, official posts.

And we, always with our crooked gaze, go back to the calendar, look for winter, swim upstream, passing the creek, arriving at the source. There we see those who begin, the few, the least. We don’t speak to them, we don’t greet them, we don’t tell them what to do, we don’t tell them what not to do. Instead, we listen, we look at them with respect, with admiration. And they, perhaps never notice this little red flower, so similar to a star, so tiny that it is only a pebble, which our hand leaves below, near their left foot. Not because we want to say to them that that flower-stone belonged to us, the (las/los) Zapatistas. Not so that they can take this pebble and throw it against something or someone, although there is not lack of desire or motive for that. But rather because maybe it is our way of telling them and all of our compas of the Sixth, that houses and worlds are built with tiny pebbles, and later they grow and almost no one remembers that what are now boulders began so tiny, as such small things, so useless, so alone. Along comes a (un/una) Zapatista, and sees the pebble, and greets it, and sits by its side, but they don’t talk, because the little stones, like the Zapatistas, don’t speak…until they speak, and then, as the case may be, become quiet. And no, they are never quiet, what happens is that sometimes there is no one to listen. Or perhaps it is because we looked far ahead in the calendar and we knew, before, that this night was coming. Or perhaps because in this way we tell them, although they don’t know it, but we know, that they are not alone. Because it is with the few that everything starts and restarts.

-*-

You did not see us before…and you continue not seeing us.

And above all, you don’t see us watching you.

You don’t see us looking at you in your arrogance, stupidly destroying bridges, digging up the paths, allying yourselves with our persecutors, scorning us. Convincing yourselves that that which does not exist in the media, simply does not exist.

You didn’t see us watching you tell others and yourselves that that was how to remain on firm ground, that the possible is solid ground, telling them that you cut the oars of that absurd boat full of those absurd and impossible people, those crazy people (*us) who remained adrift, isolated, alone, without direction, paying with our lives for sticking to our principles.

You could have seen the resurgence as part of your victories, and now you consider it as another one of your defeats.

Go, follow your path.

Don’t listen to us, don’t look at us.

Because with the Sixth and with the Zapatistas, you can’t look or listen with impunity.

And this is either our virtue or our curse, depending on where you look, and, above all, from where your look arises.

(to be continued…)

From whatever corner, in whichever world.

SupMarcos.

Planet Earth.

February 2013.

:::::::::::::::::

Reincidentes. Rock Group, Sevilla, Spain. Manuel J. Pizarro Fernández: Drums. Fernando Madina Pepper: Base and vocals. Juan M. Rodríguez Barea: Guitar and vocals. Finito de Badajoz “Candy”: Guitar and vocals. Carlos Domínguez Reinhardt: sound tech. Rock version of “I Name You Freedom” in video dedicated to the heroic struggle of the Mapuche People.

Eduardo Galeano narrates a story of Old Antonio: “The History of the Gazes.”

Joan Manuel Serrat singing “El Sur También Existe,” (The South Also Exists) by Mario Benedetti, at a concert in Argentina, Latin America. Upon finishing singing, Serrat goes backstage and brings out Mario Benedetti, so dear to us (from minute 3:01 forward).
——————————–

[i] During a speech at the Universidad Iberoamericana during the presidential campaigns, then presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI) was confronted by students protesting events that occurred during his tenure as governor of Mexico State. Peña Nieto hid and eventually fled the University, but party affiliates later dismissed the protesters in the media as a handful of non-student opposition supporters that were sent to disturb the event. Iberoamericana students then made a youtube video in which 131 of them held up their university ID’s and testified to their participation in the protest, sparking the name for a wider student movement “Yosoy#132,” “Iam#132.”

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Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico.
*********************************

Sorry, this entry is only available in Español. 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.

1.- Mirar para imponer o mirar para escuchar.

“Por una vez podré decir
Sin que haya nadie que me contradiga
Que no es lo mismo el que desea
Que el que codicia algo
Como no son las mismas las palabras
Dichas para escuchadas
Que dichas para obedecidas
Ni tampoco es el mismo el que me habla
Para decirme algo
Que el que me habla para que me calle“.

Tomás Segovia.

“Cuarto Rastreo” en “Rastreos y Otros Poemas”
de la editorial que tiene el buen gusto de llamarse “Sin Nombre”.
Gracias y un abrazo a María Luisa Capella, a Inés y Francisco
(bien haya la digna sangre que en sus corazones late)
por los libros y las letras-guía.

Mirar es una forma de preguntar, decimos nosotros, nosotras las zapatistas.

O de buscar…

Cuando se mira en el calendario y en la geografía, por muy lejos que estén la una y el otro, se pregunta, se interroga.

Y es en el mirar donde el otro, la otra, lo otro aparece. Y es en la mirada donde eso otro existe, donde se dibuja su perfil como extraño, como ajeno, como enigma, como víctima, como juez y verdugo, como enemigo… o como compañer@.

Es en la mirada donde el miedo anida, pero también donde puede nacer el respeto.

Si no aprendemos a mirar el mirarse del otro, ¿qué sentido tiene nuestra mirada, nuestras preguntas?

¿Quién eres?

¿Cuál es tu historia?

¿Dónde tus dolores?

¿Cuándo tus esperanzas?

Pero no sólo importa qué o a quién se mira. También, y sobre todo, importa desde dónde se mira.

Y elegir a dónde mirar es también elegir desde dónde.

¿O es lo mismo mirar desde arriba el dolor de quienes pierden a l@s que quieren y necesitan, por la muerte absurda, inexplicable, definitiva, que mirarlo desde abajo?

Cuando alguien de arriba mira a los de abajo y se pregunta “¿cuántos son?”, en realidad está preguntando “¿cuánto valen?”

Y si no valen, ¿qué importa cuántos son? Para obviar ese inoportuno número están los grandes medios de comunicación de paga, los ejércitos, las policías, los jueces, las cárceles, los cementerios.

Y para el mirar nuestro, las respuestas nunca son sencillas.

Al mirarnos mirar lo que miramos, nos damos una identidad que tiene que ver con dolores y luchas, con nuestros calendarios y nuestra geografía.

Nuestra fuerza, si es que alguna tenemos, está en este reconocimiento: somos quienes somos, y hay otr@s que son quienes son, y hay otro para quien todavía no tenemos palabra para nombrarlo y, sin embargo, es quien es. Cuando decimos “nosotros” no estamos absorbiendo, y así subordinando, identidades, sino resaltando los puentes que hay entre los diferentes dolores y las distintas rebeldías. Somos iguales porque somos diferentes.

En la Sexta, las zapatistas, los zapatistas, reiteramos nuestro rechazo a todo intento de hegemonía, es decir, a todo vanguardismo, sea que nos toque en la delantera o que nos alineen, como a los largo de estos siglos, en la retaguardia.

Si con la Sexta buscamos a nuestros semejantes en dolores y luchas, sin importar los calendarios y las geografías que nos distancien, es porque sabemos bien que al Mandón no se le vence con un solo pensamiento, una sola fuerza, una sola directiva (por muy revolucionaria, consecuente, radical, ingeniosa, numerosa, poderosa y demás osas que esa directiva sea).

Es enseñanza de nuestros muertos, que la diversidad y la diferencia no son debilidad para el abajo, sino fuerza para parir, sobre las cenizas del viejo, el mundo nuevo que queremos, que necesitamos, que merecemos.

Sabemos bien que ese mundo no es sólo imaginado por nosotr@s. Pero en nuestro sueño, ese mundo no es uno, sino muchos, diferentes, diversos. Y es en su diversidad donde tiene su riqueza.

Los reiterados intentos de imponer la unanimidad, son los responsables de que la máquina haya enloquecido y acerque, cada minuto, el minuto final de la civilización como es conocida hasta ahora.

En la etapa actual de la globalización neoliberal, la homogeneidad no es sino la mediocridad impuesta como uniforme universal. Y si en algo se diferencia de la locura hitleriana, no es en su objetivo, sino en la modernidad de los medios para conseguirlo.

-*-

Y sí, no sólo nosotras, nosotros, buscamos el cómo, el cuándo, el dónde, el qué.

Ustedes, por ejemplo, no son Ellos. Bueno, aunque no parecen tener ningún problema en aliarse con Ellos para… ¿engañarlos y derrotarlos desde dentro? ¿para ser como Ellos pero no tan Ellos? ¿para menguar la velocidad de la máquina, limar los colmillos de la bestia, humanizar a la salvaje?

Sí, lo sabemos. Hay una montaña de argumentos para darle sustento a eso. Incluso hasta podrían forzar algunos ejemplos.

Pero…

Ustedes nos dicen que somos iguales, que estamos en lo mismo, que es la misma lucha, el mismo enemigo… Mmh… no, no dicen “enemigo“, dicen “adversario“. De acuerdo, eso también depende de la ocurrencia en turno.

Ustedes nos dicen que hay que unirnos tod@s porque no hay otro camino: o las elecciones o las armas. Y ustedes, que en ese argumento falaz sostienen su proyecto de invalidar todo lo que no se supedite al reiterado espectáculo de la política de arriba, nos emplazan: muéranse o ríndanse. Y hasta nos ofrecen la coartada, porque, argumentan, como se trata de tomar el Poder, sólo hay esos dos caminos.

¡Ah!, y nosotros tan desobedientes: ni nos morimos, ni nos rendimos. Y, como quedó demostrado el día del fin del mundo: ni lucha electoral ni lucha armada.

¿Y si no se trata de tomar el Poder? Mejor aún: ¿y si el Poder ya no reside en ese Estado Nación, ese Estado Zombi poblado de una clase política parásita que practica la rapiña sobre los restos de las naciones?

¿Y si los electores que tanto los obsesionan a ustedes (por eso su embeleso con las multitudes), no hacen sino votar por alguien que otros ya eligieron, como vuelta tras vuelta les demuestran Ellos mientras se divierten con cada nuevo truco que hacen?

Sí, claro, ustedes se esconden detrás de sus prejuicios: ¿los que no votan? “es por apatía, por desinterés, por falta de educación, le hacen el juego a la derecha“… su aliada de ustedes en tantas geografías, en no pocos calendarios. ¿Votan pero no por ustedes? “es por ser de derechas, por ignorantes, por vendidos, por traidores, por muertos de hambre, ¡por zombis!”

Nota de Marquitos Spoil: Sí, nosotr@s simpatizamos con los zombis. No sólo por nuestra semejanza física (ni maquillaje necesitamos y aún así arrasaríamos en los casting de “The Walking Dead”). También y sobre todo porque pensamos, junto con George A. Romero, que, en un apocalipsis zombi, la brutalidad más enloquecida sería obra de la civilización sobreviviente, no de los muertos que caminan. Y si algún vestigio de humanidad quedara, brillaría en los parias de siempre, los muertos vivientes para los que el apocalipsis empieza al nacer y nunca termina. Como ahora mismo sucede en cualquier rincón de cualquiera de los mundos que existen. Y no hay película, ni comic, ni serie televisiva que dé cuenta de ello.

Su mirada de ustedes está marcada por el desprecio cuando hacia abajo miran (aunque sea al espejo), y de suspiros de envidia cuando miran hacia arriba.

No se pueden imaginar siquiera que alguien no tenga otro interés en mirar ese “arriba”, que no sea el de ver cómo quitárselo de encima.

-*-

Mirar. Hacia dónde y desde dónde. Ahí está lo que nos separa.

Ustedes creen que son los únicos, nosotros sabemos que somos uno más.

Ustedes miran arriba, nosotros abajo.

Ustedes miran cómo se acomodan, nosotros cómo servimos.

Ustedes miran cómo dirigir, nosotros como acompañar.

Ustedes miran cuánto se gana, nosotros cuánto se pierde.

Ustedes miran lo que es, nosotros lo que puede ser.

Ustedes miran números, nosotros personas.

Ustedes calculan estadísticas, nosotros historias.

Ustedes hablan, nosotros escuchamos.

Ustedes miran cómo se ven, nosotros miramos la mirada.

Ustedes nos miran y nos reclaman dónde estábamos cuando su calendario marcaba sus urgencias “históricas”. Nosotros los miramos y no les preguntamos dónde han estado durante estos más de 500 años de historia.

Ustedes miran cómo aprovechar la coyuntura, nosotros como crearla.

Ustedes se preocupan por los vidrios rotos, nosotros por la rabia que los rompe.

Ustedes miran los muchos, nosotros los pocos.

Ustedes miran muros infranqueables, nosotros grietas.

Ustedes miran posibilidades, nosotros lo que es imposible sólo hasta la víspera.

Ustedes buscan espejos, nosotros cristales.

Ustedes y nosotros no somos lo mismo.

-*-

Ustedes miran el calendario de arriba y a él supeditan la primavera de las movilizaciones, las masas, la fiesta, la rebeldía multitudinaria, las calles desbordando cantos y colores, consignas, desafíos, los que ya son muchos más que sólo ciento treinta y tantos, las plazas llenas, las urnas ansiosas por llenarse de votos, y ustedes corren presurosos porque es-claro-que les – falta – una – dirección – revolucionaria-partidaria-una-política-de-alianzas-amplia-flexible-porque-lo-electoral-es-su- destino-natural-pero-están-muy-chavit@s-son-fresas-pequebus-”niñ@s bien”- / -luego – lumpen – barrio – banda – prole – número-de-votantes – potenciales-ignorantes-inexpertos-ingenuos – torpes – necios, sobre todo necios. Y ven en cada acto masivo la culminación de los tiempos. Y después, cuando ya no hay muchedumbres ansiosas de un líder, ni urnas, ni fiestas, deciden que se acabó, que no más, que a ver si para otra ocasión, que hay que esperar 6 años, 6 siglos, que hay que mirar para otro lado, pero siempre para el calendario de arriba: el registro, las alianzas, los puestos.

Y nosotros, siempre con la mirada chueca, remontamos el calendario, buscamos el invierno, nadamos río arriba, pasamos por el arroyo, llegamos al manantial. Ahí vemos a quienes comienzan, a los que son pocos, a los menos. No los hablamos, no los saludamos, no les decimos qué hacer, no les decimos qué no hacer. En cambio los escuchamos, los vemos con respeto, con admiración. Y ellas, ellos, tal vez nunca reparen en esa pequeña flor roja, tan parecida a una estrella, tan pequeña que apenas es una piedrita, y que nuestra mano deja abajo, cerca de su pie izquierdo. No porque queramos decirles así que la flor-roca era nuestra, de las zapatistas, de los zapatistas. No para que esa piedrita la tomen y la arrojen contra algo, contra alguien, aunque no falten ganas ni motivos. Sino tal vez porque es nuestro modo de decirles, a ell@s y a tod@s nuestr@s compas de la Sexta, que las casas y los mundos empiezan a construirse con pequeños guijarros y luego se crecen y casi nadie se acuerda de esos pedruscos que empiezan, tan pequeños, tan poca cosa, tan inútiles, tan solos, y entonces viene una zapatista, un zapatista, y la ve a la piedrita y la saluda y se sienta a su lado y no hablan, porque las pequeñas rocas, como los zapatistas, no hablan… hasta que hablan, y luego el caso, o cosa, según, es que se callen. Y no, no se callan nunca, lo que pasa es que luego no hay quien escuche. O tal vez porque vimos más lejos en el calendario y sabíamos, antes, que esta noche llegaría. O tal vez porque así les decimos, aunque no lo sepan, pero lo sabemos nosotros, que no están sol@s. Porque es con l@s poc@s que las cosas inician y reinician.

-*-

Ustedes no nos vieron antes… y siguen sin mirarnos.

Y, sobre todo, no nos vieron mirarlos.

No nos miraron viéndolos en su soberbia, estúpidamente destruyendo los puentes, socavando los caminos, aliándose con nuestros perseguidores, despreciándonos. Convenciéndose de que lo que no existe en los medios simplemente no es.

No nos vieron mirándolos decir y decirse que así quedaban en tierra firme, que lo posible es el terreno sólido, que cortaban amarras de ese absurdo barco de absurdos e imposibles, y que eran estos locos (nosotros) quienes quedábamos a la deriva, aislados, solos, sin rumbo, pagando con nuestra existencia el ser consecuentes.

Pudieron ver el resurgimiento como parte de sus victorias, y ahora lo rumian como una más de sus derrotas.

Va, sigan su camino.

No nos escuchen, no nos miren.

Porque con la Sexta y con l@s zapatistas no se puede mirar ni escuchar impunemente.

Y ésa es nuestra virtud o nuestra maldición, depende hacia dónde se mire y, sobre todo, desde dónde se enciende la mirada.

(continuará…)

Desde cualquier rincón, en cualquiera de los mundos.

SupMarcos.

Planeta Tierra.

Febrero del 2013.

Password: marichiweu

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Them and Us, Part V. – The Sixth.

ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION.

MEXICO.

January 2013

To: The compañer@s adherents of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle across the world.

From: The Zapatista men and women of Chiapas, México.

Compañeras, compañeros, y compañeroas:

Compas of the Red contra la Represión y por la Solidaridad (Network against Repression and for Solidarity):

Receive greetings from the smallest of your compañeros, the women, men, children, and elderly of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.

We have decided that the first of our words directed specifically to our compañer@s of the Sixth Declaration be released in a space of struggle, a space like the Red contra la Represión y por La Solidaridad. But the words, thoughts, and feelings outlined here are also meant for those who are not present…especially for them.

-*-

We are grateful for the support that you have given our communities, our Zapatista bases of support, and to the adherents to the Sixth who are prisoners in Chiapas, during this entire time.

In our hearts we carry your words of encouragement and the collective hand that reached for ours.

We are sure that one of the points you will address in your meeting will be, or has already been, a great campaign of support for our compañero Kuy, to denounce the aggression which he suffered, to demand justice for him and for all of those injured on that day, and to demand absolute exoneration for all of those detained in Mexico City and in Guadalajara during the protests against the imposition of Enrique Peña Nieto as head of the federal executive branch.

And not only that, but it is also important that this campaign take into account the need to raise funds to support the compañero Kuy with the costs of his hospitalization and his subsequent recovery, a recovery that the Zapatista men and women hope will be a quick one.

To support this fundraising campaign, we are sending a small amount of money, in cash. We ask that, although it is small, you add it to whatever you are compiling for our compañero in struggle. When we can get together more, we will send it to whomever you designate for that job.

-*-

We wanted to take the opportunity of your scheduled meeting not only to acknowledge your own persistence, but also and above all to acknowledge, through you, all of the compas in Mexico and in the world who have remained firm in this bond that ties us together and that we call the Sixth.

We want you to know that it has been an honor for us to have you as compañeroas.

We know that this may look like a farewell, but it is not. It only means that we have ended one phase in the path that we call the Sixth, and that we think that we must now take another step.

We have suffered more than a few setbacks along the way, sometimes together, sometimes each of us in our own geography.

Now we would like to communicate and explain to you some of the changes that we will make on our path.  On this path, if you agree and accompany us, we will take up once again, but in another form, the extended recounting of pain and hope that before was called the Other Campaign in Mexico and the Zezta Internazional in the world, and that now will simply be known as The Sixth. Now we will continue further, up to…

The Time of the No, the time of the Yes

Compañeras, compañeros:

Having defined who we are, our past and present story, our place and the enemy that we face, as laid out in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, what is left pending is to further define why we fight.

We defined the “no,” we still haven’t fully delineated the “yes”

This isn’t the only thing, as we also need more answers to the “how,” “when,” “with whom.”

All of you know that it is not our intention to build a great big organization with a central governing body, a centralized command, or a boss, be it individual or a particular group.

Our analysis of the functioning, strengths, and weaknesses of the dominant system has led us to believe and to emphasize that unified action is possible if we respect what we call the “modos” [manner, way of doing things] of each of us.

And these things we call “modos” are nothing but the knowledges that each of us, individual or collective, have of our own geography and calendar. That is, of our pains and our struggles.

We are convinced that any attempt at homogeneity is no more than a fascist effort at domination, regardless of whether it is hidden in revolutionary, esoteric, religious, or any other language.

When one speaks of “unity” they elide the fact that such “unity” occurs under the leadership of someone or something, be it individual or collective.

On the false altar of “unity,” not only are differences sacrificed, but the survival of all of the small worlds under the tyranny and injustice they suffer is obscured.

In our history, this lesson is repeated time and again. And every time the world turns, our place is always that of the oppressed, the disdained, the exploited, the dispossessed.

What we call the “four wheels of capitalism”: exploitation, displacement, repression, and disdain, have been repeated throughout our history, with different names up above, but we are always the same ones below.

But the current system has gotten to a state of extreme madness. Its predatory ambition, its absolute disrespect for life, its delight in death and destruction, and its effort to impose apartheid on all of those who are different, that is, all of those below, is taking humanity to the point of disappearance as a form of life on the planet.

We could, as someone might advise, wait patiently for those above to destroy themselves, without acknowledging that their insane arrogance and pride will destroy everything.

In their drive to be higher and higher above, they dynamite the floors below, the foundations. The building—the world—will ultimately collapse and there won’t be anyone to hold responsible.

We think that yes, something is wrong, very wrong. But that if in order to save humanity and the badly damaged house it inhabits someone has to go, then it should be, it must be, those above.

And we aren’t referring here to banishing those above. We’re talking about destroying the social relations that make it possible for someone to be above at the cost of someone else being below.

The Zapatistas know that this great line we have drawn across the world geography is not a conventional understanding. We know that this model of “above” and “below” bothers, irritates, and disturbs some. This is not the only thing that irritates them, we know, but for now, we are referring specifically to this discomfort.

We could be mistaken. Quite likely we are. The thought police and knowledge inspectors will surely appear in order to judge, condemn, and execute us… hopefully only in their flamboyant writing and not hiding their vocation as executioners behind that of judges.

But this is how the Zapatistas see the world and its modos:

There is machismo, patriarchy, misogyny, or whatever one may call it, but it’s one thing to be a woman above and something completely different to be one below.

There is homophobia, yes, but it’s one thing to be a homosexual above and something very different to be one below.

There is disdain for those who are different, yes, but it’s one thing to be different above and quite another to be so below.

There is a left that is an alterative to the right, but it is one thing is to be on the left above and it is something completely different (we would say opposite) to be on the left below.

Place your own identities within the parameters we are laying out and you will see what we are saying.

The most deceitful identity, fashionalbe every time the modern state goes into crisis, is that of “citizenship.”

The “citizen” above and the “citizen” below have nothing in common; they are opposite and contradictory.

Differences are chased, cornered, ignored, disdained, repressed, displaced, and exploited, yes.

But we see a greater difference that crosses all of these differences: that of above and below, the haves and the have-nots.

And we see that there is something fundamental to this great difference: the above is above on the backs of those below; the “haves” have because they dispossess those who don’t.

We think that being above or below determines our gaze, our words, what we hear, our steps, our pains, and our struggles.

Perhaps there will be another opportunity to explain more of our thinking on this. For now we will just say that the gazes, words, ears, and steps of those above tend to conserve this division. This does not, of course, imply immobility. Conservatism seems to be very far from a system that discovers more and better forms of imposing the four wounds that the world below suffers. But this “modernization” or “progress” has no other objective than to maintain above those who are above in the only way it is possible for them to be there, that is, on the backs of those below.

In our thinking, the gaze, words, ears, and steps of those below are determined by the line of questioning: Why this way? Why them? Why us?

In order to impose answers to such questions on us, or in order to avoid our asking them in the first place, gigantic cathedrals of ideas have been built, more or less well thought out, usually so grotesque that not only is it amazing that someone has developed them and someone believes them, but also that they have also constructed universities and centers for research and analysis based on them.

But there is always a party pooper who ruins the festivities at the end of history.

And that stick-in-the-mud responds to these questions with another: “could it be another way?”

This question could be the one that sparks rebellion and its broader acceptance. And this could be because there is a “no” that has birthed it: it doesn’t have to be this way.

Forgive us if this confusing detour has irritated you. Chalk it up to our modo, our ways and customs.

What we want to say, compañeras, compañeros, compañeroas, is that what convoked us all in the Sixth was this rebellious, heretic, rude, irreverent, bothersome, uncomfortable “no.”

We have gotten to this point because our realities, histories, and rebellions have brought us to this “it doesn’t have to be this way.”

This and also because, intuitively or by design, we have answered “yes” to the question, “could it be another way?”

We still need to respond to the questions we encounter after that “yes.”

What is that other way, that other world, that other society that we imagine, that we want, that we need?

What do we have to do?

With whom?

If we don’t know the answers to those questions we have to look for them. And if we have them, we have to make them known among ourselves.

-*-

In this new step, but on the same path of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, as Zapatistas we have tried to apply some of what we have learned in these 7 years. We will make changes in the rhythm and speed of our step, but also in its company.

You all know that one of the many and great defects we have as Zapatistas is memory. We remember who was present when and where, what they said, what they did, what they didn’t say, what they undid, what they wrote, what they erased. We remember the calendars and geographies.

Don’t misinterpret us. We don’t judge anyone, everyone constructs their alibis as they can for what they do or don’t do. The stubborn advance of history will tell if they were correct or erroneous.

For our part, we have seen, listened to, and learned from everyone.

We saw who came around only to take political advantage of the Other Campaign, who jumped from one mobilization to another, seduced by the masses, and thus revealing their incapacity to generate anything themselves. One day they are anti-electoral, another day they hang their flags in whichever mobilization is in style; one day they are teachers, the next students; one day they are indigenists, the next they are allied with landowners and paramilitaries. They clamor for the avenging fire of the masses, and disappear when the antiriot tanks arrive with water cannons.

We will not walk again with them.

We saw who appears when there are stages, dialogues, good press, and attention, and who disappears when it is time for the work that is silent but necessary, as the majority of those who are hearing or reading this letter know. All this time our gaze and our ear were not directed toward those on the stage, but rather toward those who built it, who made the food, swept the floors, tended to things, drove, flyered, stuck it out, as they say. We also saw and heard those who climbed over everyone else.

We will not walk again with them.

We saw who the professionals of the assemblies are, with their techniques and tactics for driving meetings into the ground so that only they, and their followers, are left to approve their own proposals. They distribute defeat wherever they appear, facilitating roundtables, sidelining the “yuppie” and “petit-bourgeoisie” who don’t understand that at stake in the day’s agenda is the future of world revolution. Those who think poorly of any movement that doesn’t end in an assembly that they themselves run.

We will not walk again with them.

We saw those who present themselves as struggling for the freedom of the political prisoners during events and campaigns, but who insisted that we abandon the prisoners of Atenco and continue the journey of the Other Campaign because they had their strategy ready and their events programmed.

We will not walk again with them.

-*-

The Sixth was convoked by the Zapatistas.  To convoke is not to unite. We don’t intend to unite under a single leadership, be it Zapatista or any other. We do not seek to coopt, recruit, supplant, impersonate, simulate, trick, subordinate, or use anybody. Our destiny is the same, but the richness of the Sixth is its difference, its heterogeneity, the autonomy of distinct modes of walking, this is its strength. We offer and will continue to offer respect, and we demand and will continue to demand the same. The only requirement to adhere to the Sixth is the “no” that convokes us and the commitment to construct the “yeses” that are necessary.

-*-

Compañeroas, compañeros, compañeras:

On behalf of the EZLN we say:

1.- For the EZLN, there will no longer be a national Other Campaign and a Zezta Internazional. From now on we will walk together with those we have invited and who accept us as compas, whether they are on the coast of Chiapas or that of New Zealand.

In this sense, our territory for our work is now clearly delimited: the planet called “Earth,” located in that which is called the Solar System.

We will now be what we are in fact already: “The Sixth.”

2.- For the EZLN, to be in the Sixth does not require affiliation, membership fee, registration list,  original and/or copy of an official ID, or account statement; one does not have to be judge, or jury, or defendant, or executioner. There are no flags. There are commitments and consequences to these commitments. The “no” convokes us, the construction of the “yes” mobilizes us.

2.- Those who, with the resurgence of the EZLN, hope for a new epoch of big stages and large gatherings, with the masses peering in to see the future being made, and the equivalent of assaults on the winter palace will be disappointed. It is best they leave now. Don’t waste your time, and don’t make us waste ours. The walk of the Sixth is a long one, not meant for mental midgets. For “historical” and “conjunctural” actions, there are other spaces where you will surely find your place. Here we don’t want only to change the government, we want to change the world.

3.- We confirm that as the EZLN, we will not ally ourselves with any electoral movement in Mexico. Our conception about this in the Sixth has been clear and has not varied. We understand that there are those who think that it is possible to transform things from above without becoming one more of those above. Hopefully the coming consecutive disappointments do not turn them into that which they fight against.

4.- When we propose organizational, political, and dissemination initiatives, our word will be EXCLUSIVELY for those who request it and whom we accept, and sent from our website email to the addresses that we have. They will also appear on the website of Enlace Zapatista, but their full content will only be accessible with a password that will continually change. We will get you this password somehow, but it will be easy to deduce by those who read carefully what they do see and for those who have learned to decipher the feelings that become letters in our words.

Every individual, group, collective, organization or however each refers to themselves, has the right and the liberty to share this information with whomever they see fit. All of the adherents to the Sixth will have the power to open the window of our word and of our reality to whomever they desire. The window, not the door.

5.-  The EZLN asks your patience while we make public the initiatives that, over 7 years, we have developed, and whose principal objective will be to put you in direct contact with the Zapatista bases of support in what is, in my humble opinion and long experience, the best way possible: that is to say, as students.

6.- For now we’d just like to let you know that those who can and want to, and who are explicitly invited by the Sixth-EZLN, should start getting together the bread, the dough, the money, or whatever it’s called in whatever part of the planet, in order to be able to travel to Zapatista lands on dates yet to be decided. Later we will give you more details.

To conclude this letter (which, as is evident, has the disadvantage of lacking a video or soundtrack to accompany and complete the spoken version [the version to be read at the Red’s meeting]), we would like to send the best of our embraces (and we only have one best) to the men, women, children, elderly, groups, organizations, movements, or however each might refers to themselves, that all this time have not let their hearts grow distant from us, who have continued to resist and who have supported us as the compañeras, compañeros ycompañeroas that we are.

Compas:

We are the Sixth.

It will take a lot.

Opening ourselves to those throughout the world who have pain will not lessen our own. The path will be even more treacherous.

We will battle.

We will resist.

We will struggle.

We may die.

But one, ten, a hundred, a thousand times, we will always win always.

For the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee—General Command of the

Zapatista Army for National Liberation

The Sixth-EZLN

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

Chiapas, Mexico, Planet Earth.

January 2013.

P.D.- For example, the password to see this text on the webpage is, as is evident, “marichiweu,” just like that, without caps (letters “below”) and starting from the left.

::::::::::::::::::::::::
See and listen to the videos that accompany this text:

“Cumbia Zapatista,” by the group “Sonido Psicotropical.” Part of the album “Rola la lucha Zapatista.” Move your behind to the rhythm of the cumbiaaaaa!
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PLD999D1842E26FB2A&v=jkXabnv_MIc)

“Nadie mira,” by the group “RABIA.” With Iker Moranchel, guitar and vocals. Alejandro Franco, drums and vocals. Manco, Bass. Camera, Sara Heredia. Editing, Eduardo Vargus. Recorded and edited in Gekko Audiolab, Mexico City, July 2012. Also from the disk “Rola la lucha Zapastista.” Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrock!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YFJHBoWRkWk)

************************************
Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico
************************************

Them and Us Part IV:
The Pains of Those Below

January of 2013.

“How many times have the police stopped us in the street
for the crime of “carrying a face”[i] that looks suspicious, or a mohawk,
and after beating and extorting us, they let us go?”
“Repression y Criminalization,” Cruz Negra Anarquista-Mexico. January 2013

“And the young person that now sees you as a hero and an example
of someone who has been unjustly treated by a repressive system?”
“Hero, no. A hero is each of those young people that go outside everyday
to organize themselves to change this unjust society and this
economic and political system. And they do organize, they defend themselves…
They shouldn’t be afraid, because fear is about to change direction.
Alfonso Fernández, held in prison since N14,[ii] in Spain,
interviewed by Shangay Lily, on Kaos en la Red. January 2013.

We need an enemy to give a people hope. […]
But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred,
on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be
cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people.
You always want someone to hate
in order to feel justified in your own misery. Always.
Hatred is the true primordial passion.

Umberto Eco. El Cementerio de Praga (The Prague Cemetery).

When and where did the violence start?

Let’s see.

In front of a mirror, on whatever calendar, in whatever geography…

Imagine you are different from most people.

Imagine you are something very different.

Imagine you have a particular color skin or hair.

Imagine that you are disrespected, humiliated, pursued, incarcerated, or killed for this, for being different.

Imagine that since you were born, the entire system tells you over and over that you are something odd, abnormal, sick, that you should repent from what you are, chalk it up to bad luck and/or divine justice, and do everything possible to modify this “manufacturing defect.”

And of course for you, precisely, we have this product that is simply
m-a-r-v-e-l-o-u-s for genetic defects. This type of thinking
will relieve you of rebellion and that bothersome habit of complaining
about everything all the time. This cream will change your
skin color. This dye will give your hair a fashionable tint.
This class on “how to make friends and be popular in the network”
will give you everything necessary to be a modern individual.
This treatment will give you your youth back. This DVD will show you
how to behave at the table, in the street, at work, in bed,
in illegal assaults (by thieves), in legal assaults (by banks,
government, elections, and legally established businesses),
in social gatherings… what?
Oh, they don’t invite you to social gatherings?… ok, well it
will also tell you what to do so that you get invited. Anyway,
here you will learn the secret of how to triumph in life.
Leave Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber behind in your
number of twitter followers! Include a mask of your choice.
We have everything! We even have that of CSG…[iii]
Okay, okay, okay, that was a bad example,
but we do have something for every need. Let them no longer look on you
with disgust! Let them not call you trash, indian, prole,
Black, region 4,[iv] zombie, Zapatista-lover!

Imagine that you, despite all of your best efforts and intentions, don’t manage to hide the color of your skin or your hair.

Now imagine that a campaign is launched to eliminate everyone who is like you.

It’s not that there’s an event to inaugurate the campaign, or a law to establish it, but you realize that the system in its entirely has begun to work against you, and those who are like you. The entire society has become a machine whose principal purpose is to annihilate you.

First there are disapproving glances, disgust, contempt. Later there are insults, aggressions. After that come detentions, deportations, imprisonment. Later deaths here and there, legally and illegally. Finally, a true campaign, the machine at full force, to disappear you and all those who are like you. The identity of those who make up society is affirmed by the hate directed against you. Your sin? Being different. 

-*-

You still don’t see it?

Okay, imagine then that you are… (insert masculine, feminine, or other pronoun, whatever the case may be):

An Indigenous person in a country dominated by foreigners. A fleet of military helicopters is heading toward your lands. The press will say that the occupation of the wind power plant impeded the reduction in contamination, or that the jungle was being destroyed. “Eviction was necessary in order to reduce planetary global warming,” —Secretary of State

A Black person in a nation dominated by whites. A WASP [White Anglo Saxon Protestant] judge is about to sentence you. The jury has declared you guilty. Among the evidence presented by the district attorney is an analysis of your skin pigmentation.

A Jew in Nazi Germany. The Gestapo official stares at you steadily. The next day the report will say that they have purified the human race.

A Palestinian in today’s Palestine. An Israeli army missile is aimed at your school, hospital, neighborhood, home. Tomorrow the press will say that they took out military targets.

An immigrant on the other side of whatever border. An immigration patrol approaches you. The next day nothing will appear in the press.

A priest, a monk, or a layman that has opted [to advocate] for the poor, in the midst of the opulence of the Vatican. The Cardinal’s sermon is directed against those who interfere in earthly matters.

A street vendor in an exclusive commercial mall in an exclusive residential district. A truck full of riot police pulls up. “We must defend free trade,” the government representative will declare.

A woman alone, night or day, on some form of public transport full of men. A small increase in rates of “gender violence.” The police officer will say: “you know how some women are asking for it.”

A gay person alone, night or day, on public transportation full of machos. A minimal increase in rates of “homophobic violence.”

A sexworker on a strange street on an unfamiliar corner… the police pull up. “The government efficiently combats sex trafficking” the press will say.

A punk, a Rastafarian, a skater, a cholo, a metalhead, on the street, at night… another police patrol pulls up. “We are preventing vandalism and antisocial behavior” —Head of Government

A graffiti artist “tagging” the World Trade Center… another police patrol pulls up. “We will do everything necessary to make our city beautiful and attractive for tourism,” —any government official

A communist in a meeting of the fascist right-wing party. “We are against the totalitarianism that has done so much damage in the world,” —Party President.

An anarchist in a meeting of the Communist Party. “We are against those petit-bourgeois deviationists that have done so much damage to world revolution,” —Secretary General of the Party.

A “31 Minutes” news show on the CNN ticker. Tulio Triviño and Juan Carlos Bodoque look at each other, disconcerted, but don’t say anything.[v]

An alternative music group trying to sell their CD at a concert featuring Lady Gaga, Madonna, Justin Bieber, or whoever will follow them. The police come up. The fans scream like mad.

An artist dancing outside a great cultural center where the Bolshoi Ballet is performing (yes-it’s-a-gala-invitation-only-we’re-sorry-miss-you’re-in-the-way-here). Security proceeds to reestablish order.

An elderly person at a meeting presided over by the Japanese Minister of Finance Taró Asó (he studied at Stanford and recently asked elderly people “to hurry up and die” because their lives are getting very expensive). Social spending is cut further.

An Anonymous criticizing “copyright” in a meeting of Microsoft-Apple shareholders. “A dangerous hacker behind bars,” the press will say.

A young Mapuche who, in Chile, reclaims the land of his/her ancestors while watching the approach of the tanks and the offensive green of the soldiers. The bullet that mortally injures him/her will go unpunished.

A young person and/or student or unemployed person at an army-police-civil guard-carabineer checkpoint. The last they hear? “Shoot!”

A Nahua commoner in the offices of a transnational mining company. Uniformed men kidnap him. “We’re investigating,” —respective governments.

A dissident facing gray, raised metal walls, while on the other side, the Mexican political class swallows the bitter pill of yet another imposition. You are hit with the blow of a rubber bullet that takes out your eye or breaks your skull. “Calls for unity for the good of the country. Time to leave bickering behind,” —News headlines

A peasant facing an army of lawyers and police, hearing that the land where you work, where your parents were born and raised, as well as your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on back to where time becomes blurry, is now the property of a real estate developer and that you are robbing the poor businessmen of something that legally belongs to them. Jail.

An opponent of electoral fraud who sees the forty thieves[vi] and their boot-lickers exonerated. The mockery: “one must turn the page and look ahead.”

A man or a woman who comes to see what all the racket is about, and is suddenly “kettled” by the forces of order. While they push, hit, and kick him or her in taking them to the patrol, you can see the cameras from a well-known television channel pointing the other way.

An indigenous Zapatista who has been in a prison of the bad government (PRI-PAN-PRD-PT-MC) for many years. You read in the newspaper: “Why has the EZLN reappeared now that the PRI has returned to power? Very Suspicious.”

-*-

Do you follow?

Now…

Do you feel convinced that you are out of place?

Do you feel the fear of being ignored, insulted, beaten, mocked, humiliated, raped, incarcerated, or murdered, simply for being who you are?

Do you feel the impotence of not being able to do anything to avoid it, to defend yourself, to be heard?

Do you curse the moment that you came to this place, the day that you were born, the hour that you began to read this text?

-*-

Many of the examples above have a name, a calendar, and a geography:

Juan Francisco Kuykendall Leal. Compa Kuy, adherent of the Sixth Declaration, professor, playwright, theater director. Skull broken on December 1, 2012 by a bullet from the “forces of order.” He was planning to do a play about Enrique Peña Nieto.

José Uriel Sandoval Díaz. Young student from the Autonomous University of Mexico City, part of the Student Council of Struggle. He lost an eye in the repression of December 1, 2012 following the attack by the “forces of order.” He was planning resist the imposition of Enrique Peña Nieto.

Celedonio Prudencio Monroy. Indigenous Nahua. Kidnapped on October 23, 2012 by the “forces of order.” He was planning to resist the taking of Nahua lands by miners and loggers.

Adrián Javier González Villarreal. Young student at the School of Mechanical and Electric Engineering at the Autonomous University in Nuevo León, Mexico, murdered in January 2013 by the “forces of order.” He was planning to graduate and be a successful professional.

Cruz Morales Calderón and Juvencio Lascurain. Peasant farmers taken prisoner in Veracruz, 2010-2011, by the “forces of order”. They planned to resist the taking of their lands by real estate developers.

Matías Valentín Catrileo Quezada. Young indigenous Mapuche, assassinated on January 3, 2008, in Chile, Latin America, by the “forces of order.” He was planning to resist the taking of Mapuche land by the government, large landowners, and transnational businesses.

Francisco Sántiz López, indigenous Zapatista, taken prisoner unjustly by the “forces of order.” He planned to resist the governmental counterinsurgencies of Juan Sabines Guerrero and Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.

-*-

Now…don’t despair, we are just about finished…

Now imagine you that you aren’t scared, or that yes, you are, but you can control it.

Imagine that you go and, in front of the mirror, not only do you not hide nor cover up your difference, but you highlight it.

Imagine that you make of your difference a shield or a weapon, you defend yourself, meet others like you, organize, resist, fight, and without even noticing, you move from “I am different” to “we are different”.

Imagine that you don’t hide behind “maturity” and “good judgment,” behind the “now is not the time,” or “there aren’t the appropriate conditions,” “we must wait,” “it is useless,” “ there is no solution.”

Imagine that you don’t sell out, don’t give in, and don’t give up.

Could you imagine it?

Ok, well although neither you nor we know it yet, we are part of a “we” that is even larger and yet to be built.

(to be continued…)

From whatever corner, in whichever world.

SupMarcos.

Planet Earth.

January 2013.

---

See and listen to the video that accompanies this text.

“Born Free” performed by M.I.A. (Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam). Video. Director: Romain Gavras (Son of Costa Gavras). Photography: André Chemetoff. Production: Mourad Belkeddar. Executive Production: Gaetan Rousseau / Paradoxal. This video was censured by YouTube due to its content.

“Burnin´ and Lootin´” by Bob Marley. Video from the beginning of  “La Haine” (“Hate”), written and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995. Subtitles in Spanish.

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[iv] Region 4 refers to Latin America on DVD coding. Referring to someone as “región 4” is a putdown, something like saying “oh, you’re so third world.”

[v] “31 Minutos” is a Chilean television show that parodies television newscast. Tulio Triviño and Juan Carlos Bodoque are both puppet characters who parody real life figures.

[vi] “40 thieves” (as in Ali Baba and his 40 thieves) refers to the 30 governors and presidential cabinet members that assisted the launching of the “National Crusade Against Hunger” by Enrique Peña Nieto in Las Margaritas, Chiapas (a zone of heavy Zapatista influence), but is also used by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos and the Zapatistas as a way to refer to the Mexican political class in general.

****************************
Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico.
****************************

III.- The Overseers.

Somewhere in Mexico…

The señor hits the table, furious.

“Annihilate them!”

“Señor, with all due respect, we’ve been trying to do just that for more than 500 years. All exalted successive empires have tried to do so with all the military might of their eras.

“And so why are they still there?”

“Err…we’re still trying to understand that” the lackey casts a reproachful look at someone in military uniform.

The aforementioned man gets up and, standing at attention, extends his right arm in front of him, with his hand extended and shouts with enthusiasm:

“Heil…! Excuse me, I meant to say, greetings, señor.” He glares threateningly at his chuckling companions and continues:

“The problem, sir, is that those heretics don’t confront us where we are strong, they circle around on us and attack our weaknesses. If it was a question of lead and fire, well, those lands, with their forests, water, minerals, and people would have been conquered a long time ago and you, señor, could offer them as tribute to the Big Boss. But those cowards, instead of confronting us with their heroic naked chests, or with bows, arrows, and spears and going down in history as heroes (defeated yes, but defeated heroes), instead of that, they prepare, they organize, they get together and make plans, they turn their backs on us, they hide when they take off their masks. But we wouldn’t be in this situation if you all had listened to me when this all started.” He looks with reproach at another guest at the table whose placard reads “chupa-cabras[i] version 8.8.1.3.

The aforementioned man smiles as he says:

“General, with all due respect, we didn’t have an atomic bomb. And although we could have gotten one from one of our allies (the guest with the ambassador placard nods his head acknowledging the mention), we would indeed have annihilated the aborigines, but we would also have destroyed the forests and the water, and all of the work of mineral exploration and exploitation would be impossible for centuries.”

Another lackey intervenes:

“We offered them songs and poems upon their deaths praising their sacrifice, ballads, films, roundtables, essays, books, theatrical works, statues, their names in gold letters. We told them that if they tried to resist and stay alive, we would start rumors and sow doubts about why they haven’t disappeared, why they haven’t died, and we would say they were our own creation; we said we would carry out a campaign to discredit them that would even have the support of some progressive intellectuals, artists, and journalists.”

The guests make a gesture of approval, although more than one indicates displeasure at so many “ists.”

The señor interrupts impatiently:

“And?”

“They answered us with this signal” (the lackey shows him his fist with the middle finger up).

The other guests become indignant and clamor:

“Proles! Trash! Rude people! Plebes! Barrio!”

The lackey continues to make the hand signal, staring straight at the señor. The señor rebukes him:

“I got it! You can put your hand down.”

The lackey lowers his hand slowly, winking at the other guests. He continues:

“The problem, sir, is that these people don’t worship death, but life. We have tried to eliminate their visible leaders by buying them off, seducing them.”

“And so?”

“Not only have we not managed to do that, we have realized that the bigger problem is the invisible leaders.”

“Alright, find them.”

“We already found them sir.”

“And?”

“It’s all of them.”

“What do you mean all of them?”

“Yes, all of them, men and women. That was one of the messages that they were sending that day of the end of the world. We managed to keep it out of the press, but I think here we can say it without fearing that anyone else will get wind of it. It was a code for us to understand: the one who is on stage is the boss.”

“What? 40,000 bosses?”

“Err… sir, forgive me, those are just the ones we saw, we would have to add many others that we didn’t see.”

“Buy them off then. I imagine we have enough money,” he adds gesturing to the guest with the placard “Non-Automatic Teller Machine.”

The NATM stammers:

“Well, sir, we’d have to sell something belonging to the State and there’s almost nothing left.”

The lackey interrupts:

“Sir, we’ve tried that.”

“And?”

“They don’t have a price.”

“Well convince them then.”

“They don’t understand what we’re saying. And to tell you the truth, we don’t understand what they’re saying either. They talk about dignity, liberty, justice, democracy.”

Well, then we’ll pretend they don’t exist. That way they will die of hunger and curable diseases. With a nice solid information blockade, no one will even notice until it’s too late. Yes, we’ll kill them with forgetting.”

The guest who looks surprisingly like a chupa-cabras gives a sign of approval. The señor acknowledges the gesture.

“Well, sir, but there’s a problem.”

“What problem?”

“Although we ignore them, they insist on continuing to exist. Without our handouts, excuse me, I meant to say without our help, they built schools, they made the land productive, they built clinics and hospitals, they improved their homes and their food supply, they reduced delinquency rates, they ended alcoholism. And, in addition to prohibiting the production, distribution, and consumption of narcotics, they raised their life expectancy so that it’s now almost equal to that in the great cities.

“Ah, you mean it’s still higher in the cities,” the señor smiles contently.

“No sir, when I said “almost” I meant that theirs is superior. Life expectancy in the cities has gone down thanks to the strategies of your predecessor, sir.”

Everyone turns with mockery and reproach to look at the figure in the blue necktie.

“You mean to tell me that those rebels live better than those who sell out to us?

“Absolutely, sir. But no need to worry about that, we’ve put together an ad hoc media campaign to cover it up.”

“And?”

“The problem is that neither they nor our own people watch television, or read our press, they don’t have twitter or facebook, they don’t even have cell phone signals. They know they are doing better and our people know they’re doing worse.”

The guest with the placard, “modern left” stands up.

“Sir, if you’ll allow me. With our new program Solid… excuse me, I meant to say our new program National Crusade…”[ii]

The lackey interrupts impatiently:

“Enough Chayo, don’t start with speeches for the media. Everyone here agrees that the principal enemy are those damned Indians and not the other unnamable.[iii] We have that guy totally infiltrated and surrounded by people that take orders from yours truly.

The guy with the “chupa cabras” placard concurs with satisfaction and gets high fives from the guests around him.

The lackey continues:

“But you and I, and everyone else who is here, knows that all this about the social programs is a lie, that it doesn’t matter how much money we put out, at the end of the line nothing is left. Because everyone takes their cut. After you, Sir, with all due respect, take your sizable chunk, and everyone else here does too, then the governors, then the military and naval commands in each zone, then the local legislatures, then the municipal presidents, the commissioners, the bosses, the managers, the check-out people, well, at the bottom there really isn’t much, or anything, left.”

The señor intervenes:

“Well something must be done then, because if not, the Big Boss is going to look for other overseers and you all know very well, ladies and gentlemen, what this means: unemployment, ridicule, perhaps jail or exile.

The guy labeled “chupa cabras” shudders and makes a gesture of affirmation.

“And this is urgent, because if these Indians pata-rajada[iv]… (the daughter of the señor makes a gagging sign, his wife looks vaguely ill and acquires a greenish color that makes Linterna ídem look pale). The wife leaves the room saying something about pregnancy.

The señor continues:

If those damned Indians unite among themselves, we will be in very serious problems, because…”

“Ahem, ahem, señor – they lackey interrupts.

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid there’s a bigger problem, that is, something worse, sir.”

“Bigger? Worse? What could be worse than an Indian insurrection?

“Well, that they get together with the others, sir.”

“The Others? Who are they?”

“Hmm… let me see… well, the peasants, workers, unemployed, young people, students, teachers, employees, women, men, old people, professionals, gays and lesbians, punks, rastas, skaters, rappers, hip-hoppers, rockers, metalheads, drivers, neighborhood residents, NGO workers, street vendors, the people below, trash, plebes…”

“Enough! I got it… I think.”

The lackeys exchange looks with a complicit smile.

“Where are the leaders we’ve bought off? Where are those we’ve convinced that the solution to everything is to become like us?”

“There are fewer and fewer who believe them, sir. They are less and less able to control their people.

“Look for who to buy off! Offer them money, trips, television programs, property titles, council positions, senatorial seats, governments! But above all money, lots of money!”

“We are, señor, but… the lackey pauses doubtfully.

“And?” prompts the señor.

“There are more and more…”

“Fantastic! You need more money then?”

“Sir, what I mean is that there are more and more who don’t sell out.”

“Terror then?

“Sir, there are more and more who aren’t afraid, or if they are, they control it.”

“Deception?”

“Sir, there are more and more who think for themselves.”

“We have to finish them all off then!”

“Sir, if we disappear all of them, we also disappear ourselves. Who will plant the ground, who will run the machines, who will work in the mass media, who will attend to us, who will fight our wars, who will praise us?”

“Well then we have to convince them that we are as necessary as they are.”

“Sir, not only are more and more people realizing that we aren’t necessary, but it appears that the Big Boss is doubting our utility also, and by “our” I mean all of us.”

The guests at the señor’s table shift uncomfortably in their seats.

“Well then?”

“Sir, while we look for another solution, seeing as the “Pact”[v] didn’t work at all, and seeing as we must avoid repeating the shame of seeking refuge in a bathroom,[vi] we have acquired something more convenient, a “panic room!”

The table guests stand and applaud. They all crowd around the machine. The señor enters and stands in front of the controls.

The lackey, nervous, warns:

Sir, just be careful not to push the “ejection” button.

“This one?”

“Nooooooooooooooo!”

The makeup people and puppeteers run to give first aid.

The lackey speaks to one of the cameramen who has filmed everything:

“You have to erase that part… And tell the Big Boss to prepare a replacement doll. We have to constantly be ‘resetting’ this one.”

The guests at the table adjust their ties, skirts, fix their hair, and cough, trying to draw attention to themselves. The clicks of the cameras and light from the flash overshadow everything…

(to be continued…)

From whatever corner of whatever world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

Information taken from Report #69 of the Autonomous Intelligence Service (SIA by its Spanish acronym) on what was seen and heard in an ultra-arch-extremely-hyper-secret meeting held in Mexico City, back patio of the United States, latitude 19° 24´ N, longitude 99° 9´ W. Date: a few hours ago. Classification: for your eyes only. Recommendation: don’t make this information public because they are going to be watching us closely. Note: send more pozol because Elías[vii] already finished it off to the yell of “to the yell of “We can do this!” and he’s dancing ska to the track Tijuana No, “Transgressors of the Law,” the version by Nana Pancha. Sure the track is cool, but it’s hard to get into the moshing given that Elías is wearing steel-toed mining boots.

See and listen to the video that accompanies this text:

“Luna Negra.” Lyrics by Arcadio Hidalgo. Music and performance by Los Cojolites.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RRqmPk3TnGs)
Now for real the other son jarocho. ¡A zapatearle en el fandango raza!

“En esta tierra que me vio nacer” (In this land where I was born) with MC LOKOTER.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F9C61W_QnCA)
Greetings to the other Zumpango. Production and Photography: Joana López. Direction and editing: Ricardo Santillán. Production: BLASJOY DESIGNER. Year 2012.
Note: An “MC” is something like a DJ with noble sentiments and good words, but in hip hop rhyme. ¡A Rapeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeear! [Let’s rap!]

“Transgresores de la ley” (Transgressors of the law)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L5IhoPxC_ks)
by Tijuana No, version from Nana Pancha, on the album “Flores para los muertos”(Flowers for the dead). Every time “Tijuana No” played this song they dedicated it to the ezetaelene [EZLN], even when the zapatones weren’t in style. Greetings and a big hug to those who never forgot us. ¡Skaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! ¡Al brincolín banda! [Everybody jump!]

————————————————
[i] Legendary beast, literally “goat-sucker.” The name refers to the beast’s rumored vampire-like activity of attacking and sucking the blood of animals, especially goats. While its mythology is present in various countries in Latin America, in Mexico it was especially prominent in (and now used somewhat allegorically to refer to) Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s administration: the vampire aspect reflects a government looting its own nation.

[ii] “Solid…” implies that “Chayo” was about to make reference to the “Solidaridad” government assistance program under former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, when what she means to say is the “National Crusade Against Hunger” under Enrique Peña Nieto. The implication is Salinas is still pulling the strings. “Chayo” likely refers to Rosario Robles, former member of the PRD and now member of the PRI.

[iii] The “unnamable” refers to Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.

[iv] A pejorative term, like “filthy savage.” Literally “cut feet,” referring to the rough souls of the feet of those who go barefoot.

[v] Refers to the “Pact for Mexico,” a political agreement regarding national political priorities made immediately after Enrique Peña Nietos’s inauguration between all three principal political parties, the PAN, PRI, and PRD.

[vi] During a speech at the Universidad Iberoamericana during the presidential campaigns, Enrique Peña Nieto famously hid in the men’s bathroom while students outside staged a protest against him.

[vii] Elias Contreras, the main character of “The Uncomfortable Dead,” a crime fiction novel co-written by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos and a collective pseudonym given to those assigned intelligence detail for the EZLN.

*********************************
Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico.
*********************************

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Escucha y ve el video que acompaña este texto:

“Luna Negra”. Versos de Arcadio Hidalgo. Música e interpretación de Los Cojolites. Ora sí que el otro son jarocho. ¡A zapatearle en el fandango raza!

“En esta tierra que me vio nacer”, con MC LOKOTER. Saludos al Otro Zumpango. Producción y Fotografía: Joana López. Dirección y edición: Ricardo Santillán. Producción: BLASJOY DESIGNER. Año 2012.
Nota: Un “MC” viene siendo algo así como un diyi de los sentimientos nobles y la palabra chida, pero en rima hip hopera. ¡A Rapeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeear!

“Transgresores de la ley” de Tijuana No, en la versión del grupo musical Nana Pancha, de su disco “Flores para los muertos”. Cada vez que los “Tijuana No” tocaban esta rola, la dedicaban al ezetaelene, manque no estuvieran de moda los zapatones. Saludos y una gran abrazo a quienes nunca nos olvidaron. ¡Skaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! ¡Al brincolín banda!

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THEM AND US.

II.- The Machine in almost 2 pages.

January of 2013.

The salesman speaks:

It’s marvelous, very “cool,” if you get what I’m saying. It’s called “neoliberal globalization version 6.6.6,” but we prefer to just call it “the savage” or “the beast.” Yes, it’s an aggressive nickname, but it shows initiative, very grrrr. That’s what I learned in my self-help class, “How to sell a nightmare,” … but let’s get back to the machine. Its operation is very simple. It’s self-sufficient (or “sustainable,” as they say). It produces, yes, exorbitant profits… What? Invest part to those profits in easing hunger, unemployment, lack of education? But it is precisely those aspects of lack that make this precious thing go! Quite something, eh? A machine that produces its product and at the same time the combustible it needs to keep running: poverty and unemployment.

Of course, it also produces merchandise, but not just that. Look: let’s suppose that it produces something totally useless, something nobody needs, something without a market. Okay then, this marvelous thing not only produces useless stuff, it also creates a market where this uselessness becomes articles of basic necessity. The crisis? Yes of course, just push this button here, no not that one, that’s the “ejection” button…the other one… yes. Okay, so you push that button and “boom!” There you have it, the crisis that you need, all-inclusive, with its millions of unemployed, its anti-riot tanks, its financial speculations, its droughts, its famines, its deforestations, its wars, its apocalyptic religions, its supreme saviors, its jails and cemeteries (for those that don’t follow the supreme saviors), its fiscal paradises, its poverty-assistance programs with musical themes and choreography included… of course, a little charity is always looked upon in a positive light.

But that’s not all, now if you’ll allow me, let me show you this demo. When you put it into the mode “destruction/ depopulation- reconstruction/repopulation,” it does miracles. Watch this example: you see those forests? No, don’t worry about those indigenous peoples… yes they are Mapuche, but they could be Yaquis, Mayos, Nahuas, Purépechas, Maya, Guaranís, Aymarás, Quechúas. So, push that button “play” and you’ll see how the forests disappear (also the indigenous, but they never matter), now see how everything becomes a wasteland, wait… there the machines are arriving, and voilá! There you have the golf course you’ve always dreamed of, with an exclusive residential development with all the amenities. Ah, marvelous, is it not?

It also comes with software that is the latest of the latest. You can click here, where it says “filter,” and on your TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, facebook, twitter, and youtube, only psalms and praises for you and those close to you appear. Yes, it eliminates any comment, writing, image, noise, or any bad vibe that those anonymous proletarians habitually post, so dirty, ugly, bad… and rude as they tend to be.

It runs with a floor mounted stick shift (although you can also switch into automatic pilot with just a click); heliport; no, no airline ticket, because in the end there’s nowhere to escape to, but there is a place available in the next space shuttle scheduled for takeoff; it also has a super-hyper-mega-exclusive “mall”; golf course; home bar; yacht club; Harvard diploma already framed; summer house; ice skating rink… yes, I know, what would we do without the modern left and its fancy ideas? Ah, and with this new wonder you could be in “real time” and simultaneously in any part of the planet, it’s as if you had your own, exclusive global ATM.

Hmm… yes, it includes a papal bull [official communication from the pope] to guarantee you a V.I.P. spot in heaven. Yes, I know, but we are now working in this field of immortality. Meanwhile, we can install as an accessory (for an additional cost, of course, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem for someone like you): a panic room! Yes, you know it’s just like those vandals to come demand what’s theirs with all that about “the land belongs to those who work it.” Oh, but no need to worry. That’s why we have governors, political parties, new religions, and “reality shows.” But of course, it’s a supposition,[i] and if these fail at some point? No matter, in questions of security no cost is too high. Yes of course, I’ve noted it, “include Panic Room.”

It also includes a TV studio, a radio studio and a desk for editing. No, don’t get me wrong. They aren’t for watching television or listening to the radio or reading newspapers and magazines, all this is for those lowly bastards. It’s to produce information and entertainment for those [poor swine] who make the machine run. Brilliant, is it not?

What? Oh…well…yes… I’m afraid that small problem has not been solved by our specialists. Yes, if the raw material, that is, if the plebian masses rebel there really isn’t anything to do. Yes, it could be that even the “panic room” is useless in that case. But there’s no reason to be pessimistic, you should assume that day… or night… is very far away. Why yes, this new age optimism I also learned in my self-help class. Eh? What? I’m fired?

(to be continued…)

From whatever corner, in whichever of the worlds.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

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See and listen to the video that accompanies this text:

FuckTha Posse – El Fin De Los Días (Dr. Loncho, Oscar A Secas y Hazhe) – 20 Minutes Mixtape Vol. 1

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Sobrela lucha del Pueblo Mapuche.

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[i] This is a play on words. The original is “supositorio,” which means “suppository,” but sounds similar to “suposición” which means supposition or presumption.

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Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico.
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Zapatista Army for National Liberation

January 21, 2013

For: Alí Babá and his 40 thieves (governors, head of government, and boot-lickers)
From: Yo merengues

We couldn’t find words to express our feelings about your National Crusade Against Hunger.[i] So, here it is, without words:

(imagen)

P.S. Very poorly done, boys. Terrible choreography, and badly directed. That applause by the people you hauled out there was totally off queue, even the “preciso” realized it (which is saying a lot). Remember that the substance is the form (or was it the reverse?) Hmm… and the stuttering continues, in addition to errors in the use of the plural, the singular, and the masculine and feminine. You should practice more. Hmm…unless this is now the government’s style, because la chayo[ii] used to do the same thing. Anyway, give it more effort. Already no one really believes you and then with this foolishness, even less.

ANOTHER P.S. Honestly I was expecting that we’d hear the musical theme from the telethon, that the respectable folks would take out their lighters, those on stage would stand hand in hand and everyone would sway to the rhythm of “s-o-l-i-d-a-r-i-d-a-d,” followed by, of course, “mexico clap clap clap,” “mexico clap clap clap.”

ONE MORE P.S. A piece of advice: you should send those handouts somewhere else, there is no Jesús here with the last name Ortega Martínez or Zambrano.[iii] Or you could give them out in the “Pact for Mexico.” (Ah, my jokes are sublime, are they not?)
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[i] Enrique Peña Nieto recently announced what he calls his “National Crusade Against Hunger,” and inaugurated this crusade in Las Margaritas, Chiapas, area of Zapatista influence.

[ii] Although not explicit and perhaps ambiguous, “chayo” is a name often used to refer to Rosario Robles, former member of the PRD and now member of the PRI.

[iii] Jesús Ortega Martínez and Jesús Zambrano are all members of the PRD that have agreed to become part of the “Pact for Mexico,” a political agreement regarding national political priorities made between all three principal political parties, the PAN, PRI, and PRD.

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Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico.
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Listen and wath the video that accompanies this text:

“Señor Presidente”, son jarocho. Interpretan “Los Cojolites”.

THEM AND US .

I.- The (un)reasonables above.

January of 2013.

Those above say:

“We are those who rule. We are the most powerful, although we are the fewest. We don’t care what you say/hear/think/do, as long as you are mute, deaf, immobile.

We could impose as government relatively intelligent people (although they are getting really difficult to find in the political class), but instead we chose someone who can’t even pretend he knows what’s going on.

Why? Because we can.

We can use the police and military apparatus to pursue and incarcerate true criminals, but these criminals are a vital part of us. So instead we choose to pursue you, beat you, detain you, torture you, incarcerate you, murder you.

Why? Because we can.

Innocent or guilty? Who cares if you’re one or the other? Justice is just one more whore in our little address book, and, believe us, it’s not the most expensive one.

And even if you obey to the letter what we impose, even if you don’t do anything wrong, even if you are innocent, we will crush you.

And if you insist on asking why we do it, we will answer: because we can.

This is what it means to have Power. Money, riches, and such things are often talked about. But believe us, what excites us is that feeling of being able to decide the life, liberty, and welfare of any of you. No, power is not money, it’s what you can do with it. Power is not just the ability to exercise it with impunity, but, and above all, is the ability to do so irrationally. Because being in Power is doing and undoing for no other reason than having possession of Power.

And it doesn’t matter who appears up front, to cover for us. All this stuff about right and left, those are just direction for the chauffer to park the car. The machine functions by itself. We don’t even have to order punishment for whoever is insolent enough to challenge us. Governments of any size, across the political spectrum, in addition to intellectuals, artists, journalists, politicians, and religious hierarchies fight over the privilege to please us.

So, in other words, screw you, fuck you, rot, die, become disillusioned, give up.

For the rest of the world, you don’t exist, you are no one.

Yes, we have sown hate, cynicism, bitterness, desperation, the theoretical and practical sense of to-hell-with-it-all, the conformism of the “least worst,” fear become resignation.

And, yet, we fear that this could become organized rage, rebellion, without a price tag.

Because we control the chaos we impose, we administer it, we measure it out, we feed it.

Our “forces of order” are our forces to impose chaos.

But the kaos that comes from below…

Ah, that one… we don’t even understand what they are saying, who they are, how much it would take to buy them. And then they’re so rude as to not accept handouts, to not wait, ask, or plead, but instead exercise their liberty. Have you ever seen such obscenity!

This is the real danger. People that look elsewhere, that step out of the mold, or break it, or ignore it. Do you know what has always worked for us? The myth of unity at any cost. To identify only with the boss, the leader, the caudillo, or whatever you want to call it. It is easier to control, administer, contain, buy off a few rather than to do so with many. And cheaper. That and the individual rebellions. These are so movingly useless.

On the other hand, what really is a danger, a real chaos, is when each and every one becomes a collective, a group, a band, a race, an organization, and they learn to say “no” and to say “yes,” and they come to an agreement among themselves.

Because the “no” is aimed at those of us who rule. And the “yes”…ugh.. this is indeed a calamity, just imagine if everyone constructed their own destiny, and decided for themselves what to be and do. It would be like saying that we [those in power] are dispensable, disposable, that we are in the way, that we are the ones who are unnecessary, the ones that should be imprisoned, that we are the ones that should disappear.

Yes, a nightmare. Yes, of course, only now it’s our nightmare. Can you imagine what bad taste the world would consist of? Full of indians, blacks, browns, yellow, reds, rastas, the tattooed, the pierced, the studded, punks, darket@s, chol@s, skaters, those of that flag with the “A” that have no nation to buy them off, full of young people, women, prostitutes, children, old people, pachucos, drivers, peasants, workers, trash, proles, of the anonymous, of the…the others. Without a privileged space for us, “the beautiful people”… the “decent people” if you understand what we mean… because one can see a mile away that you didn’t study at Harvard.

Yes, that day would be night for us… Yes, everything would blow up. What would we do?

Hmm… we hadn’t thought about that. We think, plan, and execute what to do to prevent it from happening, but, no, no that possibility hadn’t occurred to us.

Well, in that case, then… hmm… I don’t know… maybe we’d look for whom to blame and then, well I don’t know, look for a plan “B.” Of course by then it would be useless. I think that at that point we’d remember that phrase from that damned red Jew… no, not Marx… Einstein, Albert Einstein. I believe that it was he who said: “Theory is when you know everything and nothing works. Practice is when everything works and nobody knows why. In this case we have combined theory and practice: nothing works… and nobody knows why.”

You’re right, we wouldn’t even manage a smile. Sense of humor is a legacy we haven’t been able to expropriate. Isn’t that a shame?

Yes, no doubt: these are times of crisis.

Oh hey, aren’t you going to take pictures? I mean, so we can fix ourselves up a bit and put on something more presentable. Nah, we already tried that in “Hola”[a Mexican magazine]… ah but what can we tell you, it’s clear that you haven’t gotten past the “libro vaquero”[a Mexican comic].

Ah, we can’t wait to tell our friends that someone so… so… so… other, came to interview us. They’re going to love it. And well, it will give us such a cosmopolitan image…

No, of course we’re not scared of you. With regard to that prophecy… bah, that’s just superstition, so… so… so autochthonous… Yes, that’s so third world[i]… hahahaha… what a great joke, let me write that down for when we see the boys later…

What? It’s not a prophecy?…

Oh, it’s a promise…

(…) (titutata-tatatatá sound, the smartphone ringing)

Hello, police? Yes, I need to report that someone came to see us. Yes, we think it was a journalist or someone like that. He looked so… so… so other, yes. No, he didn’t do anything to us. No, he didn’t take anything either. It’s that, now that we left the club to see our friends, we’re seeing that something has been painted on the gates to the garden. No, the guards didn’t see anybody. Of course not! Ghosts don’t exist. Well, it’s painted in many colors… no we didn’t see any paint bucket around… So, we were saying that it’s painted with many colors, really colorful, really tasteless, very other, nothing like the galleries where… what? No, we don’t want you to send a patrol. Yes we know. But we called to see if you can investigate what they painted means. We don’t know if it’s a code, or one of those strange languages that the proletariat speaks. Yes, it’s just one word, but we don’t know why it gives us chills. It says:

¡MARICHIWEU!”[ii]

(to be continued…)

From whatever corner, in whichever world.

SupMarcos.
Planet Earth.
January 2013.

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See and watch the videos that accompany this text:

a.- Pachuco

“Pachuco“, with La Maldita Vecindad y los Hijos del 5to Patio. A video that, now yes, is from what they call a perspective “from below,” that is, from the middle of the mosh pit. Moral of the story: don’t record while you’re on the trampoline. And what’s up Maldita? Don’t be so predictable and come to an agreement. Or what, you’re going to abandon the people at the mercy of the justin biebers of the world? Okay then, a hug from here from Solin, because you all understood that the communities are the real Kalimán.[iii]

b.- “Más por tu dinero” (“More bang for your buck”)

“Más por tu dinero“. Screenplay and direction by Yordi Capó. Guadalajara, México, August 2003.

c.- “On mice and cats.”

Animated drawings based on the words of Thomas C. Douglas (1904-1986).
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[i] “That’s so region 4” is the original. Region 4 refers to Latin America in the way DVDs are coded.

[ii] “We will win a thousand times,” in Mapuche.

[iii] Kalimán is another old comic. Solin was the sidekick of Kalimán.

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Traducción del Kilombo Intergaláctico
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