Mexico
December 30, 2012
To the People of Mexico:
To the Peoples and Goverments of the World:
Brothers and Sisters:
Compañeros and compañeras:
This past December 21, 2012, in the pre-dawn hours, tens of thousands of
indigenous Zapatistas mobilized and we took over, peacefully and in
silence, 5 municipal seats in the Mexican southeastern state of Chiapas.
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| San Cristobal, Chiapas. December 21, 2012 |
In the cities of Palenque, Altamirano, Las Margaritas, Ocosingo, and San
Cristobal de las Casas, we watched you and we watched ourselves in
silence.
This is not a message of resignation.
It is not one of war, death, or destruction.
Our message is one of struggle and resistance.
After the media-driven coup d'état that exalted a poorly concealed and
even more poorly disguised ignorance to the federal executive branch, we
made ourselves present so that you would know that if they never left,
neither did we.
Six years ago, a segment of the political and intellectual class went
out in search of someone to blame for its loss. At that time we were in
cities and communities, struggling for justice for an Atenco that was
not fashionable at that time.
On that yesterday first they defamed us, and then they wanted to shut us
up. Too incapable and dishonest to see that within themselves they had
and have the seeds of their own destruction, they tried to make us
disappear with lies and complicit silence.
Six years later, two things remain clear:
They don't need us to fail.
We don't need them to survive.
We never left, even though media from all over the spectrum have
dedicated themselves to making you believe that, and we are reemerging
as the indigenous Zapatistas that we are and will be.
In these past years we've strengthened ourselves and we have
significantly improved our living conditions. Our standard of living is
superior to that of the indigenous communities that are linked to the
governments in power, that receive charity and squander it all on
alcohol and useless things.
Our homes improve without hurting nature by imposing roads upon it that
are foreign to it. In our villages, the land that was previously used to
fatten estate owners' cattle is now used to grow the corn, beans, and
vegetables that brighten our tables.
Our work has the double satisfaction of providing us with what we need
to live honorably and to contribute to the collective growth of our
communities.
Our boys and girls go to a school that teaches them their own history,
that of their fatherland and of the world, as well as the sciences and
techniques they need to grow without no longer being indigenous.
The indigenous Zapatista women are not sold as merchandise. The
indigenous PRI members go to our hospitals, clinics, and laboratories
because in those provided by the government there are no medicines, nor
equipment, nor doctors, nor qualified personnell.
Our culture florishes not insolation, but rather enriched by contact with the cultures of other peoples of Mexico and the world.
We govern and we govern ourselves, always seeking agreement before confrontation.
All of this has been achieved not only without the government, the
political class, and the media that accompanies them, but also while
resisting their attacks of all kinds.
We have demonstrated, yet again, that we are who we are. With our silence, we were present.
Now, with our word we announce that:
First: we reaffirm and consolidate our membership in the National
Indigenous Congress [CNI],a space for meeting with the original peoples
of our country.
Second: we will resume contact with our compañeros and compañeras who
are Adherents to the Sixth eclaration of the Lacandon Jungle in Mexico
and around the world.
Third: we will try to construct the necessary bridges towards the social
movements that have arisen and will arise, not to lead them or take
their place, but rather to learn from them, from their history, from
their journeys and fates.
For this we have achieved the support of individuals and groups in
different parts of the world who comprise the support teams for the
EZLN's Sixth and International commissions, so that they will become
communication links between the Zapatista Support Bases and the
individuals, groups, and collectives that are Adherents to the Sixth
Declaration in Mexico and around the world who still maintain their
conviction and dedication to the construction of a leftist
non-institutional alternative.
Fourth: our critical distance from the Mexican political class will
continue; they have done nothing but prosper at the cost of the
necessities and the hopes of humble and simple people.
Fifth: regarding the federal, state, and municipal bad
governments--executive, legislative, and judicial--, and the media that
accompanies them, we say to them the following:
The bad governments from all over the political spectrum, without
exception, have done everything they can to destroy us, buy us, and make
us give in. The PRI, PAN, PRD, PVEM, PT, CC, and the future RN party
have attacked us militarily, politically, socially, and ideologically.
The corporate media tried to make us disappear, first with servile and
opportunistic slander, later with cunning and complicit silence. Those
whom they served and whose moneys breastfeed them are no longer around.
And those who have taken their place won't last longer than their
predecesors.
As was evident on December 21, 2012, they've all failed.
It remains to be seen if the federal, executive, legislative, and
judicial government decides to once again resort to the
counterinsurgency policy that has only achieved a rickety farse clumsily
based on media management, or if it recognizes and fulfills its duty
and raises indigenous rights and culture to constitutional ranking as
established by the so-called "San Andres Accords," signed by the federal
government in 1996, which was ruled by the same party that now controls
the executive branch.
It remains to be seen if the state government will decide if it
continues its dishonest and despicable strategy of its predecesor which,
in addition to being corrupt and deceitful, used the Chiapan people's
money for his own enrichment and that of his accomplices and set about
openly buying voices and pens in the media, while he heaped misery upon
the Chiapan people, at the same time that he was using police and
paramilitaries to try to stop the organizational advance of the
Zapatista villages; or if it will instead, with truth and justice,
accept our existence and the idea that a new form of social life is
blossoming in Zapatista territory, Chiapas, Mexico. Blossoming that
draws the attention of honest people all over the planet.
It remains to be seen if the municipal governments decide to keep
swallowing the millstones that the anti-Zapatista or supposedly
"Zapatista" organizations use to extort them to attack our communities,
or if they instead use that money to improve the living conditions of
their constituents.
It remains to be seen if the people of Mexico who organize themselves in
electoral struggle and resist decide to continue viewing us as the
enemies or rivals upon whom they can unload their frustration about the
frauds and attacks that, in the end, all of us suffer, and if in their
struggle for power they continue to ally themselves with our
persecutors; or if they finally see in us another way of doing politics.
Sixth: in the coming days the EZLN, through its Sixth and International
commissions, will announce a series of initiatives of a civil and
peaceful nature, to continue walking together with the other original
peoples of Mexico and the whole continent, along with those in Mexico
and around the whole world who resist and struggle down and to the left.
Brothers and sisters:
Compañeros and compañeras:
Before, we had the good fortune of honest and noble attention from
various media outlets. We thanked them for it then. But that was
completely erased with their later attitude.
Those who bet that we only existed in the media and that with the siege of lies and silence we would disappear were wrong.
When there weren't cameras, microphones, pens, ears, and looks, we existed.
When they defamed us, we existed.
When they silenced us, we existed.
And here we are, existing.
Our pace, as has been demonstrated, does not depend upon our impact in
the media, but rather upon the world's and its parts' understanding,
upon the indigenous wisdom that dictates our steps, upon the unflinching
courage that comes from below and to the left.
From now on, our word will begin to be selective in its recipient and,
with the exception of a few occassions, will only be understood by those
who have walked and walk with us without giving in to the media and
current trends.
Here, with not a few errors and a lot of difficulties, another way of doing politics is already a reality.
Few, very few, will have the priviledge of knowing it and learning from it directly.
Nineteen years ago we surprised them by taking over their cities with
fire and blood. Now we've done it again, without weapons, without death,
without destruction.
That is how we differentiate ourselves from those who, during their
administrations, delivered and deliver death to their constituents.
We are the same from 500 years ago, from 44 years ago, from 30 years ago, from 20 years ago, from just a few days ago.
We are the Zapatistas, the smallest, the ones who live, struggle, and
die in the last corner of the fatherland, those who don't give up, those
who don't sell out, those who don't give in.
Brothers and sisters:
compañeros and compañeras:
We are the Zapatistas, and we send you a hug.
Democracy!
Freedom!
Justice!
From the mountains of the Mexican southeast,
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee -- General Command of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico. December 2012-January 2013.
In Spanish: EZLN Anuncia sus Pasos Siguientes
Translation: Kristin Bricker
