One No, Many Yeses

by Paul Kingsnorth

  It’s a few days into our stay in Chiapas, and Ryan has agreed to let Lucy and I tag along on one of Global Exchange’s ‘reality tours’ of some of the Zapatista communities. These involve a group of a dozen or so people from the rich world, mostly the US, forking out a wad of cash in exchange for a week being escorted around rural Chiapas, talking to Zapatistas and others about what’s happening here. The idea is to wake people up to the ongoing low-intensity war in Chiapas, to spread the word and to further some kind of mutual understanding. As an introduction to some of the realities of Chiapas, and of Zapatismo, it’s just what I need.

  Thus it is that we are piling into a cramped minibus with a dozen reality tourists, for an hour-long journey to Oventic, one of the key Zapatista bases in Chiapas. Our companions include an affable teacher from ‘Noo Joisey’, a twenty-something Californian witch, an Irish priest and an overweight neoliberal economics professor from the American midwest, whose reason for being here is unclear, but who appears to disagree with everything everybody says. It looks like being an interesting day.

  The Zapatista revolution became an armed struggle when there was nowhere else for it to go. Long before 1994, though, it began as a process of grass-roots community resistance to what its people called mal gobierno – bad government. And Zapatismo’s success can be measured not in that short twelve-day war, not in the Mexican government’s response to its demands – not even in the success it has had at inspiring something global. Its success can be measured in the fact that, on the ground, among hundreds of thousands of Mayan villagers in Chiapas, a revolution is still taking place.

  Oventic is evidence for this. In December 1994, thirty-eight Zapatista-supporting villages in Chiapas declared themselves ‘autonomous municipalities’. In a reaction to continued government stalling over their demands, the municipalities declared that their territory, totalling almost a third of Chiapas, was now under official Zapatista control. In these autonomous zones the villagers ejected local government officials from their territories and declared that they would run their own communities their own way.

  This, they said, was what they meant by revolution: ‘Not the same form of power with a new logo or wardrobe,’ explained Marcos, but ‘a gust of fresh air’. ‘The communities created the autonomous municipalities,’ said a villager from one of the autonomous villages, ‘so we could be free to create what our thoughts tell us, to create what we want according to our needs and our history. We are not asking for the government to hand us clothes, but rather the right to live with dignity.’12

  Since 1994, the autonomous zones, against all the odds, have survived. They run their own local government, hire and fire their leaders, run their own services and train teachers and doctors. None of it has been easy. Despite support from charities and solidarity movements, abroad and at home, the autonomous communities are desperately short of money and basic necessities, from petrol to food. They refuse to accept any resources or help from central government until the San Andres Accords become law. They put up with attacks by paramilitary groups supported by landowners and PRI politicians and insistent pressure from a government that could well do without thousands of its own people effectively seceding from its control. Sometimes, that government’s patience snaps. In 1999 in San Andres, the police, in a surprise operation, invaded the town hall, shut down the Zapatista government and reclaimed the town for the state. The next day, thousands of Zapatistas – not the guerrilla army, but ordinary, unarmed citizens from San Andres and surrounding villages – reinvaded, took back the town hall and re-declared their autonomous zone. The police never tried again.

  The Zapatistas have managed to do this because community support has been virtually total. Zapatismo has survived not because of the few guns the guerrillas wield, and not even through international solidarity – though this has played a crucial part. It has survived, above all, because it has a seemingly unbreakable community base. ‘The Zapatistas’ are not just the few thousand guerrillas in the forests that the rest of world likes to focus on; they are the estimated quarter of a million people in the towns and villages from whence that army was drawn. The people who, in many cases, are living autonomy every day, and without whom the guerrillas would be nothing. Zapatismo is not just an armed rebellion – it is a whole region in daily resistance.

  This powerful support base has created what may come to be the most lasting legacy of the Zapatistas – a legacy that has built on two crucial ideas. First, that power is not something to be concentrated at government level, changing hands between political elites every few years: it is something to be devolved down to community level, to be used by and for the people it affects. And secondly, that anyone who wants this to happen should not waste their time waiting for government to hand it down to them, but should rise up as a community and take it themselves.

  After an hour’s journey along twisting, mountainous roads, our minibus pulls up outside a makeshift gate, which gives way to a long dirt track leading down a hill with a collection of wooden buildings strung out along it. We squeeze out and stand by the side of the road, gazing at the surrounding forests, encircled in ribbons of mist. Next to the gate is a wooden building covered in murals. Murals, as I am to discover, are to be found in every Zapatista community, and this building is plastered with the faces of four icons that appear in almost all of them: Marcos, Emiliano Zapata, Che Guevara and the Virgin of Guadelupe, the ancient vision of a brown-skinned Virgin Mary which appeared to a shepherd boy near Mexico City in 1531, and laid the foundations for Mexican Catholicism. In Zapatista murals, the Virgin wears a ski mask.

  Ernesto, Ryan’s colleague at Global Exchange, is negotiating with a black-masked man who has arrived to greet us. He hands over our passports and a letter of introduction. The man disappears, then returns, and we are officially welcome to Oventic. We are ushered into the mural-swathed building, which turns out to be a shop and café. Inside, the cash-strapped Zapatistas are hoping we will open our wallets in exchange for the tempting array of goodies they have laid out before us: Marcos T-shirts, ski masks, bandanas, posters, keyrings, tape recordings of revolutionary songs, books, caps, even EZLN ashtrays. Down a few steps are two rows of rickety tables and a wooden serving hatch – the whole building looks to have been made by the villagers – behind which women are making tortillas, beans and rice. They are also doing a brisk trade in bottles of Coca-Cola.

  ‘Ryan,’ I say, ‘they’re selling Coke.’

  ‘You’re right,’ says Ryan, ‘they are selling Coke.’

  ‘But they’re Zapatistas . . . they, er, well, they don’t like neoliberalismo or US colonialism, right? And they drink Coke?’

  ‘Well, they like Coke. Comandante Tacho is supposed to have said that the only good thing to come out of capitalism was Coca-Cola.’

  ‘Really? Ah.’ I can’t shake off a feeling of disappointment, which is followed immediately by a feeling of guilt about feeling disappointed. Why shouldn’t they drink Coke? No, hang on, why should they?

  ‘What you have to remember,’ says Ryan, ‘is that despite all the nice posters and cute dolls and all the rest, this is still an insurgency. Coke or no Coke, this is still a revolution.’

  As we talk, the man who met us at the gate comes in, hands over a few pesos, and walks out with a bottle. He still wears his black ski mask. Perhaps this is Zapatismo sticking two fingers up at the Coca-Cola corporation of America. Or is it the other way round?

  After a spot of lunch, we are given a tour. First stop is the clinic, a vast, concrete building covered in a stunning array of murals – Mayan dragons, masked faces, guns, fire, plants entwining themselves around windows, children holding hands. Pueblos Unidos! reads one wall. Democracia, Justicia y Libertad reads another. Inside, we gather round as the doctor, a young, dark-haired, white-coated man called Nastacio, tells us how short they are of supplies and how hard it is to work here. He grew up in a nearby village, and believes strongly, he tells us, in what Zapatismo stands for.

&n
bsp; ‘We are training our own doctors and health professionals to work in the autonomous communities,’ he says, ‘because we want to be able to keep our people healthy. But it is very hard to attract people here. You can see that we have no money. We have some medicines, but not enough. And none of us are paid.’ He says it not as a lament, simply as a fact.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he goes on, ‘people bring us corn, tortillas or beans in exchange for treatment or medicines. Which at least means we can eat!’ He smiles.

  Further down the track is a school. We are led into a classroom, and sit down on small wooden desks, scratched, ink-stained, tatty, like any school anywhere. The room is dusty and lined with what look like home-made bookshelves, crammed with books about Latin American history, sociology, politics, revolutionary theory and practice. Some of the books are in Tzotzil, the local language. Overhead projectors, old computers, cardboard boxes and a dented metal globe are piled up in a corner on the concrete floor, and motes of dust hang in the sunlight that stutters through the dilapidated windows. Only the graffiti on the desktops give away where you are: instead of ‘I love Ricky M’, the scratched slogans say ‘Zapata Vive!’ and ‘EZLN’.

  At the end of the room, behind the teacher’s desk, in a semicircle, sit eight men who have been awaiting our arrival. They wear cowboy hats or baseball caps, cowboy boots or sandals, and every one of them, without exception, wears a mask. Some are bandanas, but others are the black woollen balaclava masks that have come, more than anything else, to represent Zapatismo. The ski masks perform two practical functions: in the case of the guerrillas in the forests, they keep the worst of Chiapas’s cold mountain winters at bay; and in the case of the Zapatistas in villages like Oventic, they make it harder for the police, the state, the paramilitaries or unfriendly observers to identify the wearer.

  But the masks have come to represent more than that. The Zapatistas – ‘the ones without faces, the ones without voices’; the despised Indios – were ignored for centuries when they weren’t actively repressed. It was only, paradoxically, when they hid their faces that Mexico noticed them. Now their masks, in their identical blankness, are a symbol of identity. ‘The voice that arms itself to be heard’ goes in tandem with ‘the face that hides itself to be seen’ – and upon those unseen faces, say the Zapatistas, can be sketched the features of anyone, anywhere, who rises up to resist oppression. Behind the masks, they say, they are us – we are all Zapatistas, and we are everywhere.

  In the school, through one of those masks, we are being treated to a lecture by a representative of the EZLN Education Commission. He is explaining to us that this is one of the Zapatistas’ first autonomous schools, in which they will be propounding a ‘revolutionary, popular system of education’. It will focus on the real needs of children and communities, not those imposed from Mexico City, and it will be teaching children what the communities have decided they need to know. ‘We want to construct an example for humanity,’ says the man. ‘A people without education is one without history; a dead people. We will not have these teachers who sit behind their desks with their minds in New York or Mexico City, educating our children to make money at the expense of their people. We will provide a revolutionary education for our own people. The government says we have weapons here, and they are not wrong. Education is a very dangerous weapon; it wakes up minds, and consciences.’

  This is all rather interesting, but after two hours of it, most of the group are desperate to escape. The talk has become a political monologue, in monotone, and it has become clear that even the Zapatistas have their crashing bores. There are some inherently human problems that it seems no revolution can solve. It’s a bit depressing. Ryan is virtually dead, having been translating, nonstop, for two hours. We file outside into the bright sunlight, blinking and exchanging looks.

  ‘Well,’ I say to Lucy, ‘that was fun.’ She grimaces.

  Before we pile back on to the bus we have an appointment at the women’s co-op. A group of women have been waiting patiently all this time to introduce us to their work. The ‘Society of Women for Dignity’ is one of many projects in Zapatista communities run by and for women. It’s a co-op, to which female artisans from different communities bring their wares to sell, and any money they make is divided up equally between all the members.

  ‘It is important to us to organise as women,’ says their spokeswoman. They are all lined up in front of us, beneath hanging weavings and before shelves of woodwork and pottery. She seems nervous, which is probably not surprising. ‘For a long time, we had no way to do this. It has been hard work, but we have come together as women to assert our dignity and it has made us proud.’

  The position of women in Zapatista communities is an example of how Zapatismo has striven to fuse traditional Mayan culture with newer ideas – and how they are prepared to reject aspects of that traditional culture which are no longer acceptable to them. The deeply male nature of traditional Chiapas is one such aspect, which was rejected in the EZLN’s Women’s Revolutionary Law. The law, drawn up by women, applies to all Zapatista communities and explicitly grants women the same rights as men in all things – including decision-making, marriage and armed combat (up to a third of the Zapatista guerrillas are said to be women). Talk to any woman in any Zapatista community, I found, and she will tell you that the law, though patchily enforced, has led to a marked improvement in their lives – and a new confidence in their dealings, as equals, with the traditionally dominant men.

  Some habits are hard to change, though. Before the woman speaking can go on, a man in a cowboy hat interjects and summarises everything she has just said, in his own words, as she listens, silently, overshadowed.

  ‘Which is why they need a women’s co-op,’ says Lucy. ‘Men are the same everywhere.’

  Outside again, a village leader has something to say to us before we go. He is an old man in a checked shirt, and he wears no mask. He bows slightly beneath the weight of his words. Tiny, peeping chicks scratch around his feet.

  ‘You must know,’ he says, simply, ‘that we are suffering here. You have seen, now, how we are. Life is hard, but we struggle. We must struggle because there is nothing else. But we know that there are Zapatistas elsewhere in Mexico – that there are Zapatistas all over the world. Like us, they struggle, and they will not give up. We are everywhere. All we ask of you, now, is that you take our word; that you speak it and sing it and breathe it wherever you go. That is all.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Ryan, with a slight bow of his head. And then, we are gone.

  Back in the minibus, accelerating down the hillside back towards San Cristobal, the neoliberal professor is unhappy. He has a kind of quixotic smile-frown on his face and is sweating gently through his stretched blue T-shirt.

  ‘Now, you see,’ he is saying to anyone who’ll listen, ‘that women’s co-op is not going to survive if it goes on like that. It’s not operating efficiently. Did you see what they do? Every woman contributes different amounts of work, different skill levels, different products and yet they divide up the remuneration equally. That means that the harder-working and more skilful women are subsidising the less talented ones.’

  ‘I think that’s the idea,’ says his long-suffering wife, who seems to have made an art out of looking embarrassed.

  ‘Well, they don’t understand basic economics, that’s all. It’s not going to survive long-term. You can’t subsidise under-achievers.’ He is straight from central casting, and he’s making me feel ill.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘it’s deliberate, isn’t it? It’s community support, small-scale industry, co-operation, mutual aid. I thought you economists liked private initiatives. What alternative do you suggest? Perhaps the faster workers could take the money and run? Or do they need to set up a benefits system to dole out cash to the ones left behind?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think that would be ideal,’ he replies. ‘If they were to ask me, I would say that what would really benefit them would be a nice, clean maquiladora
just on their doorstep . . .’

  ‘What’s a may-kee-adora?’ says the teacher from New Jersey.

  ‘A sweatshop,’ says a sharp old woman from New York, who has been eyeing the professor with increasing distaste. He looks pained.

  ‘Well, that’s a derogatory term, but in any case . . . they could work for a daily wage, perhaps making sneakers or shirts, or whatever, for export to the States. Under NAFTA they would get very favourable rates. They’d earn money from export, and that would allow them to develop and—’

  ‘Who’s got a cigarette?’ demands the woman from New York. ‘I need a cigarette.’

  ‘I really don’t like smoking,’ says the professor, looking pained again, ‘particularly not in enclosed spaces.’

  ‘Yes,’ says the woman from New York. ‘I know.’

  In a small plaza in the north of San Cristobal, overshadowed by a great, florid church, Lucy and I are wandering aimlessly through a sprawling Mayan market. The stallholders are indigenous people, mostly women, and they lay out their wares on the dusty ground and on old wooden tables, plastic sheeting always at the ready to throw over their stalls when the heavy tropical rains come. Much of what they sell is tourist trinkets – clothes, paintings, souvenirs – and among these, since 1994, most of the stallholders have been doing a nice line in souvenirs for the revolutionary tourist. For the Zapatistas sell.

  Here you can pick up many of the things we saw in Oventic: ski masks, posters, flags, calendars, keyrings. One of the most popular buys for the discerning Zapaturistica is a mini EZLN soldier, made of black felt with matchsticks for guns. These are either hung from keyrings or stuffed by the half-dozen into crudely made but brightly painted little wooden lorries with ‘CHIAPAS’ written on the side. The best of them, in addition to the masks and guns, have little pipes sticking out of their mouths. You can also find, in the market and in every tourist shop in town, Zapatista T-shirts. They come in dozens of different locally printed designs, sizes and colours, but virtually all of them have one thing in common: a picture of Subcomandante Marcos.