The following is a translation of two sections of the communiqué “The
Story of the False Light, the Rock, and the Corn:” Blows Which Seek Silence, and We From Afterward Did
Understand.
Originally published in August 1999
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Blows Which Seek Silence
Brothers
and sisters attending the
National
Encounter in Defense
of
Cultural Heritage:
We greet the end of this first encounter in defense of
memory. We know that others will follow, and that this has been only the first
of many encounters and agreements that are to be constructed among those of us
who resist the buying and selling of Mexico’s cultural heritage.
They have been difficult and beautiful days. Maybe
because that’s how it is per se. The government, all of you now know, continues
assaulting the Zapatista indigenous communities and carries on with its war.
Upon attacking us, the government knows that it attacks memory. For this reason
its stubbornness, for this reason its cruelty and high-handedness. It is not
little what is at play in these lands, which in these days and nights saw you
talk, discuss, agree, differ, sing, and dance, from this true encounters are
formed.
For us having encountered you has been superb, and our
seeing you has grown large, sharing pain and anguish, indignation and rage from
this new military aggression against the Zapatista peoples. What the government
did was remind all of you that here there is a war, that there is an entire
people rebellious and resisting, and that there is an army of occupation,
federal, seeking to secure the commodity which those who command and order have
already sold. The commodity has a name, it is called national sovereignty.
It is not the first time that blows have sought to
make us keep quiet. It is not the first time that they have failed. Now, in
addition to silencing us, the blows seek to separate us from the principal
resistance movements which there are currently in the country: that of the UNAM
students and faculty, who defend the right to gratuitous education; that of the
Mexican Electricians Union [SME], who defend the electricity industry, and
yours, all of you, communities from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e
Historia and from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, as well as
from all the people and organizations which form the National Front in Defense
of Cultural Heritage. All these movements and ours have something in common:
the defense of history. That is why each attack against each one of these
movements is an attack against all the rest.
At least that’s how we understand it. That is why we
feel that the repression against the UNAM students, last August 5th,
was also against us. That is why we have supported SME’s mobilizations and
calls. That is why we have joined you in defense of memory and against the attempts
to privatize cultural heritage.
In these days we have received some notes and letters.
The compañeros have been receiving them in a little cardboard box. We read what
all of them said. That is why they say that here there are little talking boxes,
I think. There are interview requests, doubts, petitions for meetings to
exchange experiences, questions. The intensity and difficulty of these days has
prevented us from answering them and giving each and every one the response
that it demands. We hope that you will forgive us and will accept our promise
to respond to them at the time and place possible.
Among the papers there is one which asks what the
Zapatistas want; it argues that in the media much information has been passed
along which distorts what here happens and the path which moves us and drives
us.
This is the month of August, and for us it is also the
month of memory. So I will try to respond a bit to the question: “What do the
Zapatistas want?”
It is not going to be easy for you to understand us
now. For a strange reason, we the Zapatistas speak for ahead. I mean that our
words do not find place in the immediate, but rather they are made to accommodate
themselves in a puzzle which has yet to be made. So, patience, virtue of a
warrior.
Fifteen years ago, when I arrived for the first time
to these mountains. In one of the guerilla encampments I was told, before-dawn,
as is law, a story from fifteen years before, it turns three decades in this August
which wets us. I tell it to you as it comes to me, maybe they will not be the
same words, but I am sure that it will be the same sentiment of man that was
conveyed to me when, among jokes for my pathetic appearance and the clown pants
that I wore, I was welcomed to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
We From Afterward Did Understand
The
story tells that, in a town, men and women toiled working to survive. Every day
men and women went out to their respective work: men to the corn and bean
fields; women to collect the firewood and to carry the water. At times there
was work that brought them together equally. For example, men and women got
together to cut the coffee, when its time was reached. That’s how it went. But
there was a man who did not do this. He did work, but not making corn or bean
fields, he did not even come near the coffee trees when the fruit turned red on
the branches. No, this man worked planting trees in the mountains. The trees
which this man planted were not fast-growing, all took entire decades to grow
and make themselves into all their branches and leaves. The rest of the men
laughed at and criticized this man a great deal. “For what do you work on things
which you are never going to see finished. It would be better for you to work
the corn field, which after a few months already gives you its fruits, and not
on planting trees which will be large when you have already died.” “You are
stupid or crazy, because you work uselessly.” The man defended himself and
said: “Yes, it is true, I am not going to see these trees when large, full of
branches, leaves, and birds, nor will my eyes see the children playing under
their shade. But if we all work only for the present and for just the next
morning, who will plant the trees that our descendents shall need in order to
have shelter, solace, and joy?” No one understood him. The crazy or stupid man
continued planting trees that he would not see, and the sane men and women
continued planting and working for their present. Time passed and all of them
died, their children followed them in their work, and the children of their
children followed them. One morning, a group of boys and girls went out for a
walk and found a place full of large trees, a thousand birds inhabited them and
their great crowns gave relief in the heat and protection in the rain. Yes, a
whole hillside they found full of trees. The boys and girls returned to their
town and told of this wonderful place.
The
men and women got together and were left in great awe by the place. “Who
planted this?” they asked each other. No one knew. They went to talk with their
elders and they also did not know. Only one old man, the oldest in the
community, could say and told them the story of the crazy and stupid man.
The
men and women met up in an assembly and discussed. They saw and understood the
man who their ancestors interacted with and very much admired this man and
loved him. Aware that memory can travel very far and arrive where no one thinks
or imagines, the men and women from that today went to the place of the great
trees.
They
went around one which was in the middle and, with colorful letters, made a sign
for it. Then they had a party, and they were already deep into the night when
the last dancers went to sleep. The great forest remained alone and in silence.
It rained and stopped raining. The Moon came out and the Milky Way placed once
again its twisted body. Suddenly, a moonbeam ended up seeping through among the
great branches and leaves of the middle tree and, with its faint light, could
read the colorful sign left there. This is what it said:
“To the first ones:
We from afterward did understand.
Cheers”
*
* *
This which I tell you they told me 15 years ago, and
15 years had passed then when what they told me happened. And yes, maybe it is
useless to say it with words because with actions we say it; but yes, we from
afterward did understand.
And if I tell you this it is not only to greet the
first ones, nor only to give you a little piece of that memory which may appear
lost and forgotten. Not only for these reasons, also to try to respond to the
question of what we the Zapatistas want.
To plant the tree of tomorrow, this we want. We know
that, in these frantic times of realist
politics, of fallen banners, of surveys which replace democracy, of neoliberal
criminals which call for a crusade against what they hide and nourishes them,
of chameleon-like transformations; in these times to say that we want to plant
the tree of tomorrow sounds stupid and crazy, which, in any case, goes no
further than being a sensationalist phrase or a dated utopia.
We know it and, nonetheless, this we want. Not only
that, this we do. How many people in the worlds who inhabit the world can say
the same as us, that is to say, that they are doing what they want to do? We
think that they are many, that the worlds of the world are full of crazy and
stupid people who plant their respective trees of their respective tomorrows,
and that the day will arrive in which this hillside of the universe which some
call “Planet Earth” will be filled with trees of all colors, and there will be
so many birds and reliefs that yes, it is probable, no one will remember the first
ones, because all of yesterday which today vexes us will be nothing more than
an old page in the old book of old history.
That tree of tomorrow is a space where the everyone
is, where the other knows and respects the other others, and where the false
light loses its last battle. If you press me to be precise, I will tell you
that it is a place with democracy, freedom, and justice: this is the tree of
tomorrow.
This is what we the Zapatistas want. It may appear that
I have been vague in my response, but this is not so. Never before have I
spoken so clearly. In any case, times will come still in which these words will
accommodate themselves and, together, extend their embrace and be heard and
kept and thrive, for that purpose there are words and yes, also, those who travel
them.
English translation
copyright © 2014 by Henry Gales. All rights reserved.
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