Zapatistas

We have arrived in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. It´s a beautiful colonial city surrounded by mountains with tons of art and music and culture. More details on San Cris will likely be written, but for now I wanted to share the experience of visiting a town outside of the city. I went and visited an autonomous Zapatista zone called El Caracol about an hour outside of San Cristobal the other day. We had to give our names at the gate, and they recorded everything in notebooks, and then we met with the Junta de Conocimiento, a rotating pair of volunteers who answer questions that people come to them with. All the official Zapatistas wore the balaclavas over their faces, symbolizing the indigenous people´s absence from Mexican politics, and specifically the constitution. All the buildings in El Caracol are painted with these amazing murals. Many local organizations have their headquarters there. That´s why it´s called El Caracol, which means the shell, like the conch they used to use as a trumpet to call people to gather for a meeting. There were headquarters for two coffee cooperatives, women´s handicrafts cooperatives, a clinic, a school and a church, none of which answer to the Mexican government, or the mal gobierno as they called it.The indigenous people have been repressed in Mexico basically since the Spanish got here, hundreds of years ago. A recent horrifying example was in 1910, Porfirio Diaz, the Mexican general who was president (although he took it over militarily, with support from the States totaling about 9 million dollars, or maybe it was pesos) and enslaved the indigenous people in tobacco and maguey plantations. Maguey is a cactus that was used for its fibers, to make paper, rope, etc. The indigenous people weren´t even allowed to walk on the sidewalks. So what they told me in the junta was the following (more or less):
Before 1994, the indigenous people marched and protested to get the government´s attention because we were dying of malnutrition, we didn´t have any education or any services. The government didn´t listen so we took up arms in 1994. The government asked our intentions and we met to discuss. They signed a minimum agreement, but then they rejected it. The indigenous are now practicing autonomy. We have our own school and clinics and we will receive anyone. We do this without asking permission from the mal gobierno (bad government). We fight for a better life one day. We didn´t take up arms to get a chair, or for a piece of bread but to change the capitalist system and to change the constitution of Mexico. Many of our brothers and sisters have died. In 1996 in Acteal, 45 people were murdered while praying because they were Zapatistas. We cannot exchange the blood of our brothers but we can turn the blood of our brothers into the fruits of our fight. Marcos is traveling to hear the words of other states in Mexico because we know there are other brothers and sisters. We appreciate that you have come here because it´s not true what the mal gobierno says that we are all dead. We are advancing the fight of our people. This is a simple house but it is for everyone, and we thank you for coming.
Then we walked around the community and looked at the clinic and the school and the workshop where they make shoes for the guerrilla fighters. The clinic was really nice, small but very clean and orderly, with educational murals on the walls and herbal and western medicines in the pharmacy. They have two ambulances donated by an Italian NGO, and they have volunteer nurses, doctors and teachers from many countries working there. Overall at this moment it seems like some really good things are happening for the indigenous people through the EZLN, the Zapatista party, and hopefully, like the guy said, the blood of their brothers won´t be for nothing.
-Sarah