Lon Cayeway writes "Subject: Another Calendar: That of Resistance
Another Calendar: That of Resistance
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/ marcos/resistance1.html
Mexico, 2003.
Another Calendar: That of Resistance
Place: Mountains of the Mexican southeast.
Date: January of 2003.
Hour: Dawn. Climate: Cold, rainy, tense.
Altitude: Various meters above sea level.
Visibility: Without a flashlight you can't see a bloody thing.
In a hut, a shadow counters with the fragile light from a candle,
and, between the smoke from the tobacco and from the campfire, a hand
leafs through a calendar from 2003, which recently arrived at the
EZLN Headquarters.
"Calendars," the hand says, and it adds: "But there are calendars and
calendars," and it puts two newspaper photographs on the table: in
one appears the fetus that will be Fox's grandchild. In the other,
some mothers are weeping for their dead children in Comita'n, Chiapas.
The hand says: "Here, the calendar of a birth with the blessing of
Power. And here, another calendar of many deaths due to the
irresponsibility of Power."
The hand continues to speak: "Calendars of births and deaths,
calendars of payments, calendars of national celebrations, calendars
of trips by officials, calendars of government sessions. Now, in
2003, election calendar. As if there were no other calendars. For
example: the calendar of resistance. Or perhaps that one is not
spoken of because it demands a great deal and does not look like
much."
The hand stops for a bit. The calendar remains closed. It appears as
if it has been made by zapatista sympathizers. Each month, in
addition to photographs on the subject, there are fragments of the
many messages from the EZLN during the march for indigenous dignity,
in February, March and April of the year 2001.
"That march," says the hand, which is now leafing through a puff of
smoke. "The most important thing was not what we said," and it sets
the calendar aside. "The most important was what, remaining silent,
we saw. If those gentlemen and ladies who call themselves thinkers
had seen with our eyes what we saw, remaining silent, perhaps they
might have understood our later silence and our current words. But
no. They think they think. And they think that we owe them something.
But we owe them nothing. Those whom we do owe, and owe much, are
those silent ones whom we, silently, saw. Our silence was for them.
Our word is for them. Our gazes and our hands are with them and for
them."
And, as if like that, the hand points to a map of the Mexican
Republic.
The gaze follows the hand's path, and the hand now rests on a word:
OAXACA.
And the first stele...
January: Oaxaca, the first stele
(Despite the new old PRI, history resists in the face of death)
(Stelai: engraved stones, worked using the techniques of bas-relief,
which contain representations of individuals, dates, names,
events...and PROPHECIES)
It is January, month which summons up past, present and future. It is
Oaxaca, land where yesterday and today give rise to the future.
Mexican indigenous survive on this soil: Mixtecos, Popolocas,
Chochos, Triquis, Amuzgos, Mazatecos, Cuicatecos, Chinantecos,
Zapotecos, Chatinos, Mixes, Chontales, Huaves, Nahuas, Zoques,
Ixcatecos and Tacuates, in addition to an agricultural Mexican
population which is ignored. In 1990, the INEGI declared that there
were more than 1.3 million indigenous over the age of five in Oaxaca.
However, if one utilizes broader criteria than the INEGI's narrow
ones, between 60 and 70 percent of the Oaxaca population is
indigenous. Out of a total of 570 municipalities, 418 are
called "indigenous municipalities," which are governed by their own
rules of government, what some call "uses and customs."
It is January, and it is Oaxaca, and the sun advances above a hill
which has a truncated summit and which is combed with pre-Hispanic
buildings.
Different times have given different names to this mountain. And so
it was named Hill of the Tiger, and they called it Hill of Precious
Stones, and it was spoken of as Hill of the Pure Bird. Those present
now call it Monte Alba'n.
Monte Alba'n. At its feet glitters the proud disorder of the city of
Oaxaca, the capital of this province which, like all of them in
Mexico, only makes the news when it experiences the passing of
hurricanes, earthquakes and false governors, or when oppressive
poverty follows the path of armed rebellion.
As if history only counts when it narrates the defeats, desperation
and misery of those who are below, and it forgets the fundamental:
resistance.
The sun continues its path.
Also arriving from the east, a macaw flies above the Tlacolula
Valley, it circles the Etla Valley, and, in the Zaachila Valley,
after covering the four compass points, it heads towards Monte
Alba'n. It glides above the complex of buildings, all of them
oriented along a north-south axis.
All but one. Resembling an arrow, one building breaks the supposed
harmony, pointing its apex towards the southeast.
Like an out of place piece in the complicated jigsaw puzzle of
Mesoamerican archeology, this building might have marked an
astronomical, visual or even auditory point. But it also leads one to
think of something arrested, and not just in spatial terms, but also,
and above all, in temporal terms. It looks like a call to attention,
an outburst of the absurd in the midst of apparent order.
How absurd is the image of that macaw, and what is seen beneath his
vigilant and protective flight. In the southern platform of Monte
Alba'n, in front of the seventh stele, a history is recounted which
comes from a cave which is all caves...
"Indigenous blood knows that the earth conceals the fertile womb
which produced all times, and indigenous Zapoteco wise men recount
that it was inside a hill where time and life began their laborious
path.
Prior to that, that which cannot be touched with thought, the Coqui
Xee, slept in a cave. That was the grotto of time without time, where
there was no place for the beginning nor for the end.
The desire to move the world then entered the heart of the Coqui Xee,
and, given that the moon was concealed, he looked inside himself and
birthed Cosana and Xonaxi, which is how the ancient Zapotecos call
light and darkness.
With one foot from each of them, the world then took its first steps.
He who had no beginning, the one untouchable by reason, Coqui Xee,
gave birth to himself as a new moon, and thus began his long passage
in the world of the night, while by day he rested in the land of the
Mixe, in Cempoalte'petl.
Cosana, the gentleman of the night and of fire who gave birth to the
sun, made himself into a tortoise, in order to walk the earth, and
that was how he went about creating men, from the hand of Xonaxi, who
made himself a macaw in order to walk the skies, to look after the
men and women, and to see that they were created with care.
Flying the night, Xonaxi painted his path with light so that he would
not lose his way, and today his trail of fragmented light is called
the Milky Way.
From the embrace of light and darkness, from sky and earth, came the
lightning bolt Cocijo, good father, maker of the good earth and guide
of those who work it and make it bear food.
Giver of health, healer of illness, gentleman of war and death, with
the 13th Flower on his flag, Cocijo split into four in order to be in
the four points which mark the world. In order to name death and
pain, he inhabited the north, dressed in black. He established
himself in the east in amber colored clothing in order to give name
to happiness. In the west, he put on a white cloak in order to mark
destiny. And, in order to speak war, he dressed in blue and walked
the south.
The lightning, our father, married the woman of the huipil decorated
with flowers and serpents, she who was called Serpent Thirteen,
Nohuichana. She, our mother, giver of life in the womb of women, in
the beds of rivers and lakes, in the rain, she who goes hand in hand
with men and woman from birth to death, was and is good queen for
those who gave, and give, color to the color of this land.
And those who know and are silent recount that, every so often, the
lightning and the rain return, and with them love and life return,
whenever the absurd poses obstacles for any woman and man, perhaps
only to heighten the sparkle in their eyes.
If it is true, as, in fact, it is, that life first walked as liquid
in the caves that abound in indigenous lands, that the caves were and
are the womb which the first gods gave to themselves in order to
birth themselves and to make themselves, and that the grottoes are
but the hollows left by the flowering of life in the land, as
cicatrices, then it is within the land where we can read, in addition
to the past, the paths which shall take us to tomorrow.
In this January, the creator couple, Cosana and Xonaxi, embraced the
womb of the earth, and they soothed it, in order to turn it into
fertile sown fields. Not only so that the rebel struggle which is
collective - because that is the only way it can be rebel - might be
renewed, but also so the dream might be born with the color of those
of us whom are the color of the earth.
Silent history now. And what is silent is always greater than that
which speaks. Silence..."
Above, a storm greets the macaw's determined flight with lightning...
Below, Monte Alba'n remains, with its arrow building breaking the
monotony of the entire ceremonial complex, warning that there are
pieces missing, preventing us from understanding what we are seeing.
As if to remind us that what is missing is greater and more marvelous
than what we are seeing.
Because when we see what we are now seeing, vainglorious Monte
Alba'n, we futilely seek continuity. In reality, we are only seeing a
photograph, one instant, an image of a clock which stopped running on
a particular date.
But it is a discontinuous clock. Only for the powerful is history an
upward line, where their today is always the pinnacle. For those
below, history is a question which can only be answered by looking
backwards and forwards, thus creating new questions.
And so we must question what is in front of us. Ask, for example, who
is absent but yet nonetheless made possible the presence of images of
gods, caciques and priests.
Ask who is silent when these ruins speak.
There are not a few stelai in Monte Alba'n. They mark calendars which
are not yet understood. But let us not forget that they present the
calendars of those who held power in those times, and those calendars
did not envisage the date in which the rebellion from below would
bring down that world. Like an earthquake, the discontent of that
time shook the entire social structure, and, while leaving the
buildings standing, it did away with a world which was removed from
everyone's reality.
Since ancient times, the governing elites have been fashioning
calendars according to the political world, which is nothing but the
world which excludes the majority. And the disparity between those
calendars and those of lives below, is what provokes the earthquakes
in which our history abounds.
For every stele which the power sculpts in its palaces, another stele
rises from below. And, if those stelai are not visible, it is because
they are not made of stone, but of flesh, blood and bone, and, being
the color of the earth, they are still part of the cavern in which
the future is ripening.
Those buildings which, like plumes, crown the Hill of the Tiger, do
not belong to those who raised and maintained them with their effort
and wisdom. "Monumental architecture, in instances such as Monte
Alba'n and other sites of Mesoamerican cultural interest, was a
response to the need for a space dedicated to ceremonies, which
corresponded to the organizational demands of a priestly social class
with a much higher status than that of the average agricultural
population. And so the buildings of Monte Alba'n, from their first
period, were used for reinforcing the political system based in
religious worship and for maintaining the ruling class in power. The
populace in the villages and towns were charged with supplying all
the consumer goods for that class, as well as with providing labor
for constructing the buildings and for their continuous maintenance.
Another obligation was that of providing all the supplies necessary
for carrying out the ceremonies and the indispensable human material
for those ceremonies." (Robles Garci'a, Nelly. Monte Alba'n. Codees
Editores).
It was the powerful who enjoyed the work of those of below, the work
which raised these buildings, these buildings which are less
surprising than the arrogance which destroyed them. Because Monte
Alba'n, as often happens in those spaces where power resides,
collapsed from rebellion from below, which was, in turn, provoked by
the indifference of those who governed.
The Spanish conquistadors' two-fold lesson of Monte Alba'n (the
advanced development of a culture and the neglect caused by
government arrogance) passed unnoticed. For the Spanish crown of the
16th century, as for the neoliberalism of the beginning of the 21st
century, the only culture is the one which they dominate. Then the
indigenous lands were nothing but an abundant source of labor for the
Spanish powers, as they are now for savage capitalism. Under the
Spanish power, condemned to barbaric forced labor in the mines,
almost 90% of the indigenous population of Oaxaca disappeared. But
their suffering continued underground, and rebellion was forged in
the grottoes, rebellion which today nourishes the color of the earth.
And what was good for the Indian peoples of Oaxaca was also good for
the rest of the indigenous of Mexico: their cultural wealth was, and
is, discounted (sometimes through direct destruction, other times
through ignorance, yet others through racism, and always through
condemnation of the different) by those who are power and dominion.
If, upon seeing the remains of the so-called pre-Hispanic cultures,
the average spectator marvels and imagines their splendor, he would
marvel even more upon seeing the cold cruelty and savage stupidity of
those who have destroyed it (and contempt and commercialization are
also a form of destruction) and ignored it.
And so it is quite wrong to blame the Spanish race, or any other, for
the long pain of the Indian peoples of Mexico. It was, and is, the
powerful who, regardless of the race to which they belong, reaffirm
their dominion with the destruction of the identity of those under
their control.
Following Mexico's liberation from Spanish dominion, the owners of
money and their politicians have carried forward the destruction of
indigenous culture with a brutality equal or greater to that of the
Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.
Recently, intelligent voices have been raised, warning that the
Salinas reform of Article 27 of the Constitution (which allows the
sale of ejidal land to individuals) will have serious impact on the
archeological monument zones. One of these zones is Monte Alba'n,
where it so happens that part of its original land will now be in the
hands of private business (El Universal, 2/28/2002). Or at least that
is what the neoliberal governments are attempting.
But there are resistances. The residents of the municipalities of San
Pedro Ixtlahuaca, Santa Cruz Xoxocotla'n and Santa Mari'a Atzompa
have organized in order to prevent that privatization of history.
Gathering together ejiditarios, comuneros, small owners and
residents, the Zapatista Front Against Privatization and Neoliberal
Seizure's names bears witness to its avocation and its work.
Since the middle of 2001, these Oaxacans have been denouncing what
was to come: the privatization of Monte Alba'n. That it was not
interest in preserving that archeological zone which was behind the
government programs, but rather selling them in order to build
hotels, convention centers and commercial premises.
One year later, in 2002, Governor Murat took a step towards realizing
Salinas de Gortari's dream: the Monte Alba'n XXI project, privatizing
ejidal lands in the areas surrounding the archeological complex and
repressing those who were opposed to this commercialization of
history. The resistance, however, was maintained, even though it was
banished from the media. "We are the true defenders of the
archeological zone of Monte Alba'n, because it is our home, and also
the home of all Mexicans. But, in this continuous struggle to try to
care for it and protect it, we are resisting culturally, and we are
confronting those who are trying to destroy it, restricting the use
and enjoyment of our lands for the benefit of large investors," these
rebel indigenous said, and committed themselves.
The old new PRI, with Jose' Murat, Dio'doro Carrasco and Heladio
Rami'rez fighting over the plunder, is following the route which was
marked out by their last great leader: Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
That is why they are resorting to their most well tried argument:
repression.
Nonetheless, and in spite of the repression, some of the strongest
examples of anti-neoliberal resistance are in Oaxaca, and all of them
are being carried out not only in spite of the political parties, but
also against them.
Last December, a group of young persons cane together around culture.
They were attacked by the Juchita'n police, and their members are
still being persecuted by the "democratic" municipal government.
In the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca, the Ricardo Flores Mago'n Popular
Indigenous Council has taken heavy hits for refusing to surrender or
to join Murat's, Dio'doro's (the one who, when he was Secretary of
Government in Zedillo's government, "orchestrated" the PRI defeat in
the 2000 lections) or Heladio's factions.
In the Southern Sierra (but not only there), the Zapatista Magonista
Alliance, the Coalition of Organizations of the State of Oaxaca, the
Defense Committee for the Rights of the People, the Coalition of
Independent Organizations of Cuenca, the Broad Front of Popular
Struggle, the Civil Front of Teojomulco, the Sole Front of Indigenous
Defense, the Indian Organizations for Human Rights of Oaxaca, the
Union of Poor Campesinos and the Revolutionary Youth of Mexico, have
all joined together in the Oaxaca Popular Magonista Anti-Neoliberal
Coordinating Group, and they are building one of the most interesting
processes of resistance.
And not only those. The Oaxaca resistance abounds in wisdom,
decisiveness and names: Services of the Mixe People, Union of
Organizations of the Sierra Jua'rez of Oaxaca, Union of Indigenous
Communities of the Isthmus Region, the State Coordinating Group of
Coffee Producers of Oaxaca and the Unified Movement of the Trique
Struggle, to mention just a few of the many that exist on Oaxaca soil.
And resistance not infrequently takes on the name of the
municipalities which raise them. Thus appear: Quetzaltepec-Mixe, San
Pedro Yosotatu, Union Hidalgo, Yalalag, and others which people the
Oaxaca geography with rebellion.
You would be hard pressed to find any members of these organizations,
or of these municipalities, running for office. Their avocation is
not Power, but service. That was mandated by the ancient ones who
raised the grandeur of Monte Alba'n and whose rebellion toppled those
who governed with arrogance.
But if the neoliberals of the PRI or the PAN or the PRD manage to get
away with it, we will be facing the possibility that the history of
Mexico will be turned into one more business listed on the Stock
Exchange: History of Mexico Company SA of CV. What other value, in
addition to being a tourist site, can capital place on pre-Hispanic
archeology?
When the front men for big money (Diego Ferna'ndez de Cevallos and
his pati~os Manuel Bartlett and Jesu's Ortega, of the PAN, PRI and
PRD respectively) scuppered the constitutional recognition of
indigenous rights and culture in the Mexican Congress, they were not
only aping the encomenderos of the colonial period, they were also,
and above all, stating that the history of Mexico was one more
commodity in the international market. If the manner in which they
did it resembled a vaudeville act, it is because politicians can
never resist the temptation to do the ridiculous.
But the powerful do not only purchase history in order to possess it,
but also in order to prevent its being read as it should be, that is,
looking ahead.
The history of above continues saying "were" to those who still are.
It does so because up there the only thing that matters is the
exchange of those who are in power. And so time ends for the powerful
only when another power replaces it.
Below, however, time continues to flow.
By responding to the unknown posited by the historic past, those
below decipher crooked lines, ups and downs, valleys, hills and
hollows. That is how they know that history is nothing more than a
jigsaw puzzle which excludes them as primary actor, reserving for
them only the role of victim.
The piece which is missing in national history is the one which
completes the false image of the uniqueness of possible worlds, the
current one, but rather the one which includes everyone in its true
reach: the constant struggle between those who are attempting the end
of times, and those who know that the last word will be built through
resistance, sometimes in silence, far from the media and the centers
of Power.
Only in that way is it possible to understand that the current world
is neither the best nor the only one possible, nor that other worlds
are not merely possible, but, above all, that those new worlds are
better and are necessary. As long as that does not happen, history
will remain nothing but an anarchic collection of dates, places and
different colored vanities.
The grandeur of Monte Alba'n will not be completed with the discovery
of more temples, tombs and treasures, nor even through the exact
reconstruction of its undeniable splendor. Monte Alba'n will be
complete - and along with that, it will be part of the real history
of our country - when it is understood that the ones who made it
possible, who raised and maintained it, and whose rebellion
undermined the arrogance that inhabited it, are still living and
struggling, not so that Monte Alba'n and its power will be renewed
and history will make an impossible backward turn, but for the
recognition of the fact that the world will not be complete unless it
includes everyone in the future.
The indigenous movement in which zapatismo is inscribed is not trying
to return to the past, nor to maintain the unfair pyramid of society,
just changing the skin color of the one who mandates and rules from
above. The struggle of the Indian peoples of Mexico is not pointing
backwards. In a linear world, where above is considered eternal and
below inevitable, the Indian peoples of Mexico are breaking with that
line and pointing towards something which is yet to be deciphered,
but which is already new and better.
Whoever comes from below and from so far away in time, has, most
certainly, burdens and problems. But these were imposed on him by
those who made wealth their gods and alibis. And, in addition, those
who come from such a long way can see a great distance, and there is
another world in that distant point which their heart divines, a new
world, a better one, a necessary one, one where all worlds fit...
If, in their long and stupid march, the neoliberals say "there is no
culture other than ours," below, with the underground Mexico which
resists and struggles, the Indian peoples of Oaxaca are
warning: "There are other grottoes like ours."
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
On to Puebla, the second stele (resistance and another church, the
errant ones):
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/ marcos/resistance2FEB.html
March: Veracruz, the third stele.
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/ marcos/resistance3.html
Tlaxcala, the Fourth Stele (The rebels of always)
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/ marcos/resistance4.html
Hidalgo, the fifth stele (The Mexico of Below)
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/ marcos/resistance5.html
Queretaro: The Sixth Stele
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2003/ marcos/resistance6.html
Chiapas and the Zapatista rebellion
Documents, communiques and images from 1994 to the present
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico.html
Zapatista index
(English language)
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/zapatista.html
Posted by: cpepper@ewebtribe.com
Passed along by: LonCayeway@Yahoo.com"
