#subcomandantemarcos — Public Fediverse posts

1) A parte la prima brevissima frase, il resto è tratto da un discorso ufficiale del #SubcomandanteMarcos.

2) Si tratta di stencil su carta da parati autoadesiva, molto difficile da rimuovere, quasi al livello degli #eggshell.

2/n

#guerrillastickersHandmade #guerrillastickers #gsnag #noadesivigrazie #stickers #stencil #stencilstickers #handmade #handmadestickers #stencilart #diy #diystickers

1) A parte la prima brevissima frase, il resto è tratto da un discorso ufficiale del #SubcomandanteMarcos.

2) Si tratta di stencil su carta da parati autoadesiva, molto difficile da rimuovere, quasi al livello degli #eggshell.

2/n

#stencilart #diystencil #diy #barbie #stickerart #gsnag #guerrillastickers #noadesivigrazie #sticker #stickers #stickerslap #stickerslaps #stickerart

Disappeared Victims in Mexico ‘’Are Not a Number, But People’’ – Zapatista

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. The victims of enforced disappearance in Mexico “are not a number to be manipulated in the media, as is happening these days, but rather people with names, stories, relatives, and friends who are nowhere to be found and who must be located and rescued for life, for memory, and for both,” Captain Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) said.

He added that the struggle of the hundreds of collectives, groups, and organizations searching for their disappeared relatives “has been used for partisan political agendas.”

He said that “there have been attempts to co-opt them, manipulate them, silence them, make them disappear, but they are still there, and no matter what spectacle they put on from above—be it soccer, music, or useless and sterile debates—they will remain there and will not falter until those who are missing today reappear.”

And yes, he added, “perhaps the Mexican soccer team will finally reach the fifth game and it will all be a party and a celebration, and people will say ‘I always knew it,’ and Vasco is Basque, but long live Mexico, you bastards, you bitches, and cheers! But in the uncertain limbo of what was once the Mexican nation, now united only by pain and terror, those who fight tirelessly for the disappeared will continue, among them, one who was once called homeland and who is lost between the frivolous and superficial because truth and justice are part of the disappeared.”

Marcos expressed the above during the third and final day of activities of the April 2026 Semillero: The Storm Inside and Outside, According to the Zapatista Communities and Peoples, held in San Cristóbal.

Unity and Fragmentation in the Struggle

In the 1 p.m. session, she spoke about “A Peep into the Storm in the World: The Fragmentation of Territories and Resistances and Rebellions,” saying that “only those who are clear about the why, that is, their history; the what for, that is, their objective; and the how, that is, their organizational structure, are the ones who do not falter, do not surrender, do not sell out, and do not give up.”

He added: “Here, for example, are some of the parents of the missing students from Ayotzinapa, who, as on other occasions, are with us: Don Mario and Doña Hilda, who, like the rest of their comrades, continue to persevere in the search for their missing loved ones.”

The hundreds of attendees at the meeting held at the Caracol Jacinto Canek*, located within the Comprehensive Indigenous Training Center (CIDECI) in San Cristóbal, chanted: “September 26th is not forgotten, it is a day of combative struggle.”

The captain had previously referred to “the unity and fragmentation of the struggle” and said that “a few months ago” Sub-commander Moisés briefed the militia on what he had discussed in a session of the General Assembly of Local Autonomous Governments.

“He told us that our duty as present-day Zapatistas is to create the material conditions for the survival of future generations; that is, the conditions for them to have life, but that they were already seeing that this wasn’t enough, that we had to transmit to them resistance and rebellion, that is, not surrendering, not selling out, and not giving up, and that this couldn’t be put on paper or in a community assembly resolution. It’s not even something that could be transmitted verbally.”

Resign Yourself or Organize

He pointed out that after several assemblies, they concluded that “one of the proposals was that the legacy should be the example, that resistance and rebellion, not selling out, not surrendering, and not giving up were just empty words if they weren’t accompanied by action; that if we wanted to inherit the Commons, we had to practice it—those of us who are authorities, leaders, organizers, area and inter-zone leaders, officers and militia, and all the titles and roles that arise in our organizational structure.”

This idea of ​​legacy, Marcos explained, “is relevant, because every movement, organization, group, collective, individual who resists and rebels has consciously or unconsciously made a decision in the face of the dilemma posed by this year’s call: to resign yourself or to organize.”

He continued: “Our Zapatista belief is that behind every call for unconditional unity lies an attempt at absorption, hegemony, and homogenization. Every call for unity masks the main issue: who will be in charge and how we will operate. In other words, the implementation of a pyramid structure. We see that fragmentation is not actually division, but rather the recognition of differences. They make us believe that we are stronger if we unite and present a common front, but they don’t clarify that within that union, there are those who command and those who obey.”

He clarified that the Commons proposed by the Zapatistas “doesn’t refer to individual organization but to the objective: confronting the enemy. Many struggles, many battles, and one fight against the system. We don’t know if this vision we have will work, and certainly it can be debated, discussed, and rejected that the fragmentation of organizations leads to a good outcome. What is certain is that there are many examples of unity, with a capital U, ending in failure. We believe that unity should not be confused with the objectives of an organizational community.”

*The Caracol Jacinto Canek is no longer located in CIDECI (translator’s note).

Original article by Elio Henríquez, La Jornada, April 4th, 2026.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.

#SubcomandanteMarcos #LucioUrtubia #LuigiMangione #TedKaczynski

A Common Roof — Zapatistas

The pouring has to be done in one go.  It can’t be done in parts because the roof will look bad.  That’s when you have to pour a lot, but in an organized way.  Pouring a roof is like dancing: everyone knows their place, what they have to do, and with whom.  If it rains, then it’s all over.  So you have to ask the most knowledgeable people, be alert, be ready.  Then you say, “On such and such a day,” and the people gather, and the jobs are distributed.  It’s done early, because otherwise the heat is unbearable and you end up like a fumigated cockroach.  When it’s finished, we laugh and drink pozol.  At lunch, we all gobbled up some beef.  There’s no party outside, but there is one in our hearts.  “It’s ours,” we think.  And we know that it belongs to everyone and no one.  An operating room is a place where those who know how to wield a knife remove the evil from you as if they were removing a bad thought.  It takes time and leaves you a little messed up, but that’s life: which also takes time and leaves you messed up, but there are moments when the damage is already done.  And there is no party outside, but there is one in our hearts.  Construction is like fighting, you do it because you’re going to need it one day.  You or yours, which doesn’t mean they’re your property, but rather your family, those close to you, your compañerxs.

Yes, we still need someone who knows about electricity to come, because they are going to have equipment that not everyone has. Single-phase, two-phase, three-phase, grounding, and I don’t know how many other things. We have ground, but you have to know about electricity because otherwise the equipment will break down and it will be useless.  It’s like when the music stops at a dance, and you’re left with the cumbia unfinished. Imagine you’re having stomach surgery and the power goes out, and you’re left with your guts hanging out like an old bandana.  That’s why the next thing we need is an electrician.  We need to find one who’s willing to work for the community.  Do electricians get sick too?  They get sick, and they have needs too.  So that’s what’s missing. And the windows and doors, because not just any windows or doors. Doctors? There’s already a team, so to speak, but more are sure to come. Because if you have a knife, a machete, a chainsaw, a drill, but there’s no one to open your stomach, then it’s useless, as we say here. And some doctors have already come to see.  I didn’t show my face because what if the doctor sees me and wants to start practicing right away.  And then, once again, there’s no special electricity.  I’d better wait.  But the roof is already there.

Yes, there are still many things missing, but it already has a roof, and a roof is important for life.  That’s why the gods made the sky, so that the world would have its roof.

Yes, what’s missing is yet to come.

Hopefully they’ll make tamales.  Yes, and hopefully they won’t be raw.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain
November 2025.

Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on November 26th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=24506

#chiapas #ezln #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

3 Postscripts 3 VIII.- The Commoin Against Deadly Boxes and Pyramids — Zapatista

An assembly of bosses, female, male and otherwise.

Imagine that you arrive at a Zapatista assembly.  Allow me to accompany your gaze and your listening.  We are in a meeting.  SubMoy is presiding.  At a broad glance (“as the crow flies,” as they used to say – now it is “with a drone”), you can detect obvious differences among those who participate.

In gender, for example.  There are women, men and non-binary people.

In terms of timing.  There are children, youngsters, adults and people already of age (“third age” or “senior citizens”).  There is also the offspring still in the mother’s womb.

Of language.  There are those whose mother tongue is Cho’ol, Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Mam or Ta Yol Mam, Zoque, Kakchikel, and Castilian.

Of geography.  There are those from the different areas of the original peoples of the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Of creeds and beliefs.  There are Catholics, Evangelicals, Presbyterians, atheists, and those without defined or undefined beliefs.

There are also differences in what it is or means to be born, grow, live, and fight as natives in a geography where being “other” is a motive for contempt, exploitation, repression and dispossession.  “Being” where “not being” is the rule and the stigma for the different.

For example, there are those who argue, argue, debate, yell, shout, wave their hands, get angry, joke, murmur: “if the Mayan kings, the Aztecs, the Spaniards, the priests, the French, the gringos, the bad governments of Mexico and the world, and all the and caxlan bastards (of all genders) that came just to see what they could steal, we would have already found the cure for cancer, the remedy for sadness and the consolation for heartbreak. For all other misfortunes, we are there, although slow… like a snail”.

And, on the other hand, there are those who argue against it and defend certain religions and caxlans; that for sadness the cumbia has already been discovered; and that, for heartbreak, any carpenter knows that “a nail pulls out another nail”.

-*-

Now look for similarities, common identities.

Well, the first one that jumps out is that these people are Zapatistas. You assume this because the large gallery in which they are gathered is in a caracol. A “puy”. Those like work and meeting centers, where there are usually clinics, sometimes laboratories, athletic fields, collective and common stores, dining rooms, pavilions, and people walking from one side to the other.

It is possible that Veronica Palomitas, who has her own courier service, is also there. In exchange for a piece of candy, you can ask her to go get you something from the co-op store. Veronica Popcorn gets on her bike and pedals relentlessly to accomplish the mission. No matter the distance. Even if it’s up to 100… meters, the acting head of Comando Palomitas ensures that your order gets to her from you.

However, despite the evidence, not everyone may be a Zapatista. It is normal that, at times, non-Zapatistas brothers and sisters arrive for a health service -an ultrasound, for example-, to ask for orientation on some matter, to have a party or simply to go for a walk.

If you wait until pozol time (that kind of “lunch break” that is customary in rural areas at work or in their long meetings), you will hear them talking and smiling in languages that you assume are native because you don’t understand anything. Because yes, laughing in Tzeltal is not the same as laughing in Tzotzil or Cho’ol.

Neither is crying.

The late supGaleano used to drive Veronica Palomitas to despair when she started to scream: “I don’t understand you if you cry in Cho’ol”, he would tell her and Veronica would be disconcerted. “If I saw that you were you squealing in Castilian, maybe I could understand you”. The little girl tried to find out how to cry in Castilian, but she had already forgotten what the tantrum was about?

Oh, right. Some very nice flip-flops that Veronica Palomitas looked at in the cooperative store. Her father told her that “there was no money” and the old man rambled on because he argued that the boots were better. It was all for no use, and so the shrieking. Nothing serious, because the Captain, always prepared, took out of his hat… a chamoy candy! And then Veronica and the Captain would start planning terrible and marvelous things… like a play with footnotes. But those are all secrets that won’t be published…yet.

But don’t get distracted, concentrate. The similarities are not conclusive, because being native is shared with millions in Mexico and in the world; being Zapatistas with hundreds of thousands; being women or men or non-binary is also shared with millions.

Of course, you are right. It is clear that these people are not there to complain, either about their bad luck, or that they were born indigenous, or that they have been dispossessed, exploited, despised, repressed. In short, that history that they share with other native peoples of the world.

No complaints are heard other than that someone’s belly hurts because the tamales were raw, or because now they are sleepy, or because that other compa uses very harsh words that even he doesn’t understand, and no matter what, you have to respect his word.

But don’t be fooled, the silence you hear is not one of agreement, acceptance or resignation. It is one of thought.

Don’t think that everything is calm either, no. There are discussions, and loud ones. There is no shouting and hat-waving because few people wear hats. Let’s say there is “yelling and banging”. The female compañeras tend to be more lethal: they give each other dirty looks and gestures. And there are no fights with chairs as a weapon and shield, because… there are no chairs, but benches that discourage any arms race (they are heavy).

-*-

Ah, that’s right. Among their differences is their history as Zapatistas. There are those who, clandestinely, prepared the blitz of January 1994. Those who marched, armed with truth and fire, in the streets of 7 municipal capitals that were taken by “the Indians”. Veteran combatants, old guerrillas, local, regional and zonal leaders, commanders of the so-called “Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee”.

There are those who were just children in the uprising, and grew up in the midst of betrayals of all kinds, attacks and harassment by the armies, the police, the paramilitaries. There are those who built Zapatista autonomy.

There are those who have been born in the last 30 years and who have built schools, clinics and the entire organizational structure of Zapatista autonomy. Those who have organized meetings, festivals, workshops, tournaments, games, arts, and culture. Those who are Tercios Compas, Education Promoters, Health Promoters, Art and Culture Coordinators, painters, theater artists, singer-songwriters, dancers, musicians (no offense), bricklayers, poets, carpenters, novelists, mechanics, chauffeurs, militiamen, militiamen and militiapeople, poets, insurgents, autonomous authorities, filmmakers, sculptors, commissions of everything necessary (templete commission, cleaning, parking, latrines, bathrooms, puppies and kittens, kitchen, firewood, surveillance, shopkeepers, taqueria, tamale crudo, pyramid, musicals, motor, water, light, …, beetles? beetles? )

And, of course, there are the kids who do what every kid in the world should do: get into mischief.

Three generations. Four if we take into account childhood. Five, counting the one on the way.

In short, a more or less complex society. With their jobs and their quarrels. With the way these same communities have equipped themselves to organize the former and resolve the latter.

What is appreciated is the seriousness of the meeting. The same seriousness with which they decided and carried out an uprising; the same seriousness with which they decided autonomy and raised it; the same seriousness with which they defined their path with two words “Resistance and Rebellion” -and they fight it and live it day and night-; the same seriousness with which they called for the struggle for life; the same seriousness with which they now plan this next meeting.

The same seriousness with which they looked at themselves in the mirror of practice, critiqued not the reflection that the mirror gave back to them, but what they were and are, and thus reconstructed themselves.

-*-

Many people. Many differences. And what they have in common doesn’t really make them different from others in the world.

But they found a common ground. A commonality. Something in which they coincide and does not require that they stop being who they are, nor deny their history, their roots, their way. Something to which they can contribute, support, with their knowledge, work, opinions, doubts.

Anyway. They are part of what is known as “Interzone”. But only a part, because there are authorities of Inter-ACGAZ, ACGAZ, CGAZ and GAL. There are coordinators. There are young people from the different areas. A lot of youth. A lot of noise.

Now they are united by a common purpose: to make other geographies, modes, genders, languages, generations understand how, against one pyramid, another one was built; how the latter was demolished; and how the common was and is the machete, axe, barretón, hammer, that first built it , and then destroyed it, in order to then destroy the biggest one: the system. Capitalism, the mother pyramid, which under its shadow and hierarchy has seen the birth and growth of other pyramids: patriarchy, homophobia, vanguardism, authoritarianism, psychopathy-turned- government, nationalism, criminal destruction of nature, and wars.

And why it is necessary to destroy the pyramid, any pyramid, and all pyramids.

It is an assembly by the way. But they did not meet to find out about something, but to reach an agreement on what, how, where, why.

A meeting to agree and organize. To prepare everything so that our compañeras, compañeros and compañeras from Mexico and the world, feel as they should, that is to say, accompanied.

And all this noise to prepare for a meeting. One with compañeros, compañeras and compañeroas who are similar in their differences. An international one. One for life.

From the Mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain
July 2025.

Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on July 27th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=20612

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

3 Postscripts 3: The Maverick

First he snorted in irritation. His fur bristled like a surly and rebellious cat, disdainful of boxes and pyramids. Just like that, without even warning.

Then, for those who do not know, a kind of tender caress.  Then the clawing, increasing  in quantity and strength.  And then, a whirlwhind of discontent.  Before long, it was a runner.  The fury of the wind was joined by a rain as if to tell the windstorm that it shared its rage.  It threw men and leaves against the walls of the champas and, I swear, the foundations of the concrete pavilion creaked.

Wind and rain.  Nowhere to turn.  Better to be left in the middle of the fury than to risk the guillotine flight of the torn sheet metal as if defying the modest modesty of the galleries already cleaned, with paint and walls renovated.

But, strangely enough, the storm respected the periphery and concentrated in the center.  There, where the skeleton of a pyramid rose not a few meters from the gravel.

As if to say: “No pyramids here”.

And the blankets that simulated the walls of the pyramid, swelled with that mixture of wings and sails that at times resembled a wandering ship and at times a lost aircraft, with no land in sight, only with the certainty that below was the ground waiting without haste, as if saying “just right here”.

We tried to talk to it, but, between the rain and the gale force winds, we barely managed to get it to let up long enough for the fellows who had climbed to the top to place the money sign to come down.  Immediately, a strong, concentrated blowing blew the sails off and the blanket flew up the mountain.

“That’s how ghosts are born,” I thought.

We began to explain in a rushed manner that it was not to be left per se, but rather as an explanation of the policy.  To reveal, that is.  That there were no true or false gods.  That, of itself, is going to be destroyed.  Not only that one, but all the pyramids.  Yes, in the whole and in the parts.  Yes, in all the corners of the planet.

He slowly faded away, as if doubting our commitment.

He left later but not quickly, as if to say “if the human being does not comply, we, the parts of the first mother, will comply”.

-*-

SubMoy checked the construction and said: “It’s not going to fall easy”.

A compa, as it were, made a nick in one of the crossbeams with his machete.  He only muttered: “It’s going to fall, it’s going to fall.  It might delay, but it falls because it falls”.

“The most difficult thing will be the central column, it is very solid,” he added, “we will have to put a lot of strength, a lot of desire and not just a few of us, but many”.

“That is: in common and organized,” said a young painter.  We all laughed, although we were still frightened by that irritated wind, who knows where it came from.

“That post is well rooted.  Even if they knock it down, it will resprout.  You have to pull it up to the roots,” said an elderly woman, planted in jars in front of the wooden construction, as if defying it.

“It is the soul of the system,” responded a companion to a girl’s question about the central mast, “the private property of the land, of the machines, of the houses, of the people, of nature, of dreams and nightmares, of the skies and the seas, of what is seen and what is not seen, of the world, therefore.  It is not only at the foundation of the system.  It is also in our head, in our heart and in our history.”

“But how many are coming?” they asked me.

“A good many,” I replied.

“But do they bring their will to fight?” they insisted.

“Saber,” I said to myself, “as SubMoy says: it remains to be seen.”

“Hey captain, is that thing going to be there all my life,” a militia woman asked me.

“No, how do you think, it’s for the Zapatista talk, why do you ask?”

“Because I think a soccer team is coming and that thing is in front of one of the goals, where our dining room is.  So there will be neither  game or food.  The soccer game, whatever, but the food, well…”

The afternoon began to sprout from the trees.  For an instant, the moon, the sun, the rain and the wind coincided, appearing before the mountain.

-*-

Is that going to be there forever?

Well, no, that’s why we are fighting.  It might linger, but there are going to be more of us.

And in the wind followed the warning that the rain engraved on the earth:

“If the human being does not comply, we will comply, the parts of the first mother.  The pyramid will fall.

-*-

Not far away in calendars and geographies, Palestine remained a tear of blood on the indifferent face of the world’s governments.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain
July 2025

Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on July 16th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=20405

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

3 Postscripts 3 IV.- Of Cats and Boxes

A paradox of Schrödinger’s paradox

Erwin Schrödinger (Austria-Ireland. 1887-1966), who seems to have been not very fond of house cats, proposed a theoretical exercise for quantum physics.

The approach is simple, although its implications are very complex.  A cat has been placed inside a box. The box has a device that, with no definite time, releases a sort of lethal mechanism and the cat will die.  Since the box is airtight, it is not known whether the cat is still alive or has already perished.  Once the box is opened, one possibility or the other is proven.  The previous moment, when we do not know if it is alive or dead, suggests that there are two worlds or two simultaneous universes.  In one the cat is already dead, in the other it is still alive.  A mortal mechanism activated and not activated; a cat alive and dead at the same time; a superposition of states according to quantum physics.

Let’s leave aside, for now, the references to comic book multiverses and the consequences in quantum physics. Let us also leave aside Don Schördinger’s animosity towards cats, and that he obviously did not know much about those felines (anyone who has dealt with them knows that they would not let themselves be caught, much less allow themselves to be locked up, without protesting and without defending themselves -even more so if it is a… cat-dog-). Let’s also not take too much notice that the cat is imprisoned and condemned to death, unless someone sees fit to open the box when the lethal mechanism has not been activated, and the cat jumps out and frees itself from the prison.

This theoretical exercise is supposed to be a basis for showing that worlds in several universes are possible, that is, in a multiverse (although it is also to show that the laws of quantum physics do not apply in everyday life).

As far as my limited knowledge of comics allows me, I understand that, in those diverse worlds, the individual still prevails, but in different versions. In one world, Sheldon Cooper (TV series “The Big Bang Theory”), is a scientist with social problems. In another, he is an irredeemable womanizer. In another, he is a “popular” judge in Mexico’s judicial system (oh, I know, my perversity is sublime).

And this digression that, I hope, is perplexing, comes to the topic, or point supposedly that even with the imaginative capacity to raise the simultaneous existence of the living cat and the dead cat, the possibility (or the universe) of there being one or several cats that refuse to enter the box is not raised. And perhaps with the aggravating factor that the supposed cat is actually a cat-dog.

In pointing out some possibilities, others are omitted.

When talking about the capitalist system, the different proposals refer to what they can do to improve the conditions of the cat locked in the trap, to lengthen its life (or its chances of life), or to “humanize” the lethal device.

It is, shall we say, what progressivism is all about. Definition of progressivism? Well, those who are leftists until the eve of taking office and having a position, office, pay, well, then. Then they stop being leftist, they become the establishment, and disguise their pragmatism (which leads them to ally and join their enemies of the eve -and to distance themselves from their social past-), as “political realism.” It is, then, a capital-friendly left. That is to say, a “cool”, pretty, demure and blushing right wing.

In this case, progressivism promises, on the eve of the event, to free the cat from its prison. Then, because he cannot or will not do it, he “changes” his proposal: “I will make you more comfortable”; “I will get better conditions for your death”; “I will fight so that the lethal mechanism does not activate too quickly.” Or, he may instead urge the prisoner to hang on, since he has a 50% chance of temporarily surviving. Imprisoned, yes, but alive.

-*-

The capitalist system is that box. Inside it, multitudes wait, without knowing it, for the murderous mechanism to be activated. Wars, famines, “natural” catastrophes, violent assaults, assassinations, governmental arbitrariness, destructions that will have to solve the enigma: “to live or to die.”

In the box there are those who have the crime of being a woman, boy or girl, young, old, other, dark-skinned, native, with a foreign language in their own land, and so on. No matter their condition, gender, race, ideology, religion, manner, stature, physical complexion: that person is inside the box and is subject to those deadly laws.

Not only without the possibility of getting out, but also without even imagining that another world exists out there.

The option to delay death or improve the conditions of condemnation is submission and acceptance to be part of the showcase of “weird things” that the system exhibits for its own amusement. Woman, Non-binary person, Native, Race, Neighborhood, Nationality, every “oddity” has its place in the curiosity store if it behaves “well.” If not, well, the “invisible hand of the market” will pull the exterminating lever.

Example: the crime of being born, growing up and fighting in Palestinian lands is not to accept being part of the showcase of capital. And to resist and rebel against the machine. The machine wants a recreational center in Gaza and Palestinian civilization is in its way, the Palestinian people are fighting for a land to live in.

Palestine is the best example of the terminal crisis of the so called “Nation States” and their governments. They do not command, they only obey at convenience. They are incapable of presenting an independent, dignified and consistent foreign policy.

And in the ongoing mass murder, the complicity and neglect of the governments of the planet (with a few exceptions), is pathetic. The police of the different European and American governments repressing the demonstrations for the cessation of the genocide in Palestine, are the best oratory about Western “humanism”.

In the world above, European governments are the idle and useless court of the reigning king, Russia and China are the counts and dukes conspiring for regicide, and offering an alternate monarch. The rest of the national governments in the world, except for those who have clearly spoken out against it, are the busy pages, stressed by the continuous demands and harassments of the royal family.

Who are those that contemplate, operate, have fun and make bets on what happens in the box? The big financial, commercial, industrial and, now, digital and aerospace capital.

The governments of the world, for the most part, are just the ticket-takers of the bets, the “brokers” on the stock exchanges where the wars are always up, and life below… down. And, as the Mileis of the world are and will be, they are the ones who are sent to buy and serve the wine that will preside over the monarchic banquets (the chainsaw is an autochthonous detail).

-*-

However, there are those who consider another possibility: not to enter the box or to get out of it.

Moreover, there are those who question the box itself, its eternal and omnipotent existence; and its claim to be the only universe that tolerates the existence, within itself, of diversity, of several universes or multiverses… domesticated.

Those people who are posing that are what we Zapatistas call “resistance and rebellion.” Resistance to enter the box or, if you are inside, Rebellion to fight to get out.

Resistance and Rebellion that proposes the destruction of the box, of the logic that created it and of the belief that “something else” is not possible.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain
July 2025.

Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on July 7th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=20290

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

III.- Patriotic Postscript A Nightmare With Shield, Anthem and Flag (And, Of Course, Biometric CURP) — Subcomandante Marcos

Let’s assume a fictitious scenario: the positions that the U.S. armed forces have taken on the border with Mexico and in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, are not to threaten, pressure or monitor the cartels. Nor are they for skirmishes or in-and-out strikes against any cartel. The strategic positioning of these forces is for an invasion.

If this were so, then references to the national anthem would be more rhetorical. A call for national unity, as in the times of Luis Echevarría Álvarez and José López Portillo.

Still with the assumption, then it would be expected that the bad governments would start preparations: the Military Draft  would be activated and the civilian population would be instructed in the handling of firearms, construction of defenses, uses of shelter and cover, knowledge of the terrain, and chain of command. Of course, for this to happen, the civilian population would have to be provided with weapons, however rudimentary they may be. And the armed forces would reorient their actions to defense preparedness.

The proof that this is unthinkable for the governments is that the so-called national guard law just approved is going precisely in the opposite direction. The entire structure and strategy of the armed forces in Mexico would be, in military terms, not for internal control, but for defense against a foreign attack. And the armies would not be designing, building and administering the mega-projects of the officialist propaganda of the 4T.

Let’s suppose that Mr. Trump is not content to bend Mexico with tariffs, selective border closures, and trade and financial measures. Suppose Trump is someone eager to be noticed, to “go down in history” (sound familiar?). Let’s assume that he is not interested in a quiet and discreet domination of his target, and that he needs to show off and thinks nothing better than guns to do so. Let’s suppose that Trump is a “bully” who not only needs to humiliate his target, he needs to be seen, that this cowardly action “serves as a lesson.” Sure, he’s not smart, but he’s got his gun locked and loaded.

What would he count on in his favor?

An essential point of an invasion is to have a casus belli, a motive for the war.

Eduardo Ramirez Aguilar, who claims to govern the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, has already given the gringos a guideline to follow in this hypothetical situation.  His local armed forces momentarily invaded neighboring Guatemala and he immediately justified the blunder by accusing that government… of complicity and of protecting organized crime (the same thing the gringos say about Mexico).  Of course, he got a slap in the face from the center, but the wrong was and is done.

With its new prerogative, the military, instead of spying on those who criticize and oppose the 4T, would gather information on the ground and on the military capabilities of the likely aggressor.

For its part, the aggressor would gather the necessary information about the target of the invasion. And, as we have seen, information on the character of the enemy, his psychology, his behavior would weigh more heavily.

Another element to consider in this supposed invasion would be whether it has local support in the invaded territory.

Because, unlike in Ukraine and Palestine, where a Juan Guaidó did not appear -or has not appeared yet-, as in Venezuela, in Mexico there are those who sigh and aspire to be part of the American Union.

The ultra right (also known as “opposition”) wants to be noticed. The fuss they make seven days a week is not aimed at the voter. The latter is already campaigning for the ruling party with the payment of the increasingly meager social support, when it comes to reaching the recipient.

The ruling party is wrong in celebrating that the hysteria of the right wing does not produce any appreciable effect on what matters to it: the votes.

The ultra-right is not throwing a tantrum and kicking its feet so that the people of Mexico will look at it.  It is so that in “the brutal and turbulent north” they will be taken into account.

This sector, although small in numbers, is quite “loud” in the media.  However, it would have at least two problems:

One is when to expose themselves for what they are.  And when they say, in their after-dinner conversations, “Mexico will not be Venezuela,” they do it knowing they will not show  themselves until the flag of the stripes and murky stars flies over the old Palacio de Cortés.  “We will not be Juan Guaidó, who stayed waiting for the Marines to land,” they say to themselves.

But, two, the biggest problem they have would be to decide who would be the one to receive the invader as host.  And in their eagerness to take the lead, they would reveal themselves: Alito? Anaya? Salinas Pliego? A triumvirate?  The latter has a classic charm.

In general, the 4T currently owes a lot to the ultra-right.  Its media belches give it internal cohesion, jingoistic discourse and ammunition for the mornings and the like-minded pencil pushers.

-*-

And in this, the look into the past, the ultra-right coincides with the ruling party (National Regeneration Movement Party, the Green Ecologist Party and the Workers’ Party -the 3 with the paradox in their names-).

Again and again, in the school of cadres of these parties, that is, in the “mañaneras” (morning press conference), it is repeated that the pre-Hispanic past was splendorous (in reality, they refer to their adoration for the Aztec empire -that is what it was, an empire-).  Which is why they rewrite history to suit their own agenda.

While in the ultra-right they would swoon to see the U.S. army marching on Reforma, in the ruling party some would dream of the Russian army, others of the Chinese army, and, well, the PT would long for the arrival of the army of… North Korea!

In the ultra-right and the ruling party, the dilemma would be who would be at the top of the pyramid.  A change at the top of the pyramid or a change of pyramid, then.

In this hypothetical situation, can you imagine the heroes of the 4T wielding a 5.56 mm caliber FX-05 Xiuhcoatl (AK-47 Fire Serpent)? Do you imagine them facing the invader’s bullets with their heroic chests? Or do you imagine them running for cover?   Oh, oh, in this hypothetical scenario there is nowhere to go.  Unless they change sides….

Right, you’re right: good thing that’s not going to happen!  There is nothing on the horizon to suggest anything like that.  It’s just the Captain’s desire to make a nuisance of himself and ruin the meal.

-*-

If you look at the political class, this country called Mexico is a country of many lies.  Many bosses – male and female.  Too many generals, not enough troops.  Each one with his or her own war to climb the pyramid.  Their calls for national unity are useless because they cannot even unite their own party organization.

In addition: corruption, inefficiency and inability (for example, in the face of floods and droughts), refried demagogy, window dressing indigenism, “independent” voices for hire: freelancers and sicarios in the morning, the experts’ columns, the institutionalization of cheating (because the cheat sheet is an old school trick).

Meanwhile, as a sign of change, the country goes from being a clandestine cemetery to a zone of disappearances.  And it is celebrated as progress: “violent deaths have decreased”, although now disappearances are increasing.  The No Place like the homeland with biometric CURP(Unique Population Registry Code).

-*-

Questions:

1.- So what was to be planted was corn and beans and not marketable saplings?1

2.- Consequently, since the government recognizes the destruction of nature with the Mayan Train (“we are not going to cut down a single tree,” said the Supreme Court), and in accordance with the foreign policy of demanding apologies, are they going to apologize to the people of “Sélvame del Tren” for the insults, harassment and pressure, and recognize that they were right in their denunciations? And to the affected native communities? 2

3. Ah, so it was not true that they put an end to the so-called huachicol?  3

4.- Does the current situation mean that the policy of “hugs and not punches” is pretty much over and done with?

5. So the “good” Salinas (Ricardo Salinas Pliego) is not so good, and it was a mistake to finance him with the administration of the welfare programs in the first years of the last six-year term? Now the ‘bad’ Salinas (Carlos Salinas de Gortari) will become a respected “Mr.” Salinas? 4

6.- Why is there time, disposition and “good will” to receive the paradoxical Carlos Slim, the gringo Secretary of State and the big businessmen (all beautiful people, listen), but not to receive the CNTE and the searching mothers? Because they are ugly? Because they are “eat-when-there-is-and-when-there-isn’t-they don’t”? Ah, because they are at the bottom of the pyramid?

7.- By accusing the ineffable Alfonso Romo 5 of money laundering is the gringo government demonstrating that it has learned from organized crime? Like warning Clara Brugada6 not to step out of line by murdering two of her collaborators? Or for whom is the warning?

-*-

But it’s not all the disfigurement of the national and international political class up there.

Below…

There are those who seek and, although late, do not give up, do not sell out and do not give in.

There are those who do not look up, but look in the mirror.

There are those who, seeing themselves in others, who find themselves.

Because “rebelliousness is born and grows all over the planet, refusing to accept the limits of schemes, rules, laws and precepts.  Because there are not only two genders, nor seven colors, nor are there four cardinal points, nor is the world one” (Semillero Comandanta Ramona, August 9, 2018).

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain.
Mexico, now in July of 2025.

Original text published in Enlace Zapatista on July 2nd, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

Footnotes

1. Refers to the government’s Sembrando Vida program, a program that supposedly works on Reforestation and environmental restoration: planting and caring for native trees on degraded lands; and Rural poverty alleviation: providing a monthly income (~5,000 pesos) and technical assistance to farmers to promote sustainable agroforestry and agricultural practices. The Sembrando Vida program, however, in its planning as well as its execution, is not the benevolent program that it would seem.
2. More on the Tren Maya here. https://time.com/6245748/maya-train-tulum-yucatan-indigenous-people-land
3. Huachicol is a colloquial Mexican term that refers to stolen fuel—usually gasoline or diesel—taken illegally from Pemex pipelines (Mexico’s state-owned oil company). It also refers to the act of fuel theft itself and those involved in it (huachicoleros).
4. Ricardo Salinas Pliego is one of Mexico’s richest  man. He is the owner of Grupo Salinas, which includes: TV Azteca – Mexico’s second-largest television network, Banco Azteca – a major bank serving low-income and working-class Mexicans, and Elektra . Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) developed a close and favorable relationship with Salinas Pliego during his administration (2018–2024). Banco Azteca was chosen to help distribute funds for AMLO’s flagship social programs, like “Sembrando Vida” and pensions for seniors.
5. Alfronso Romo is the owner of Vector Casa de Bolsa, the largest fund management company in Latin America. Vector is one of three banks named for sanctions by the Trump administration accused of money laundering
6. The Mayor of Mexico City’s personal secretary and close advisor were killed by gunmen in broad daylight on the streets of Mexico City on May 20th, 2025.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=20139

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

"Στα όνειρά μας έχουμε δει έναν άλλο κόσμο, έναν τίμιο κόσμο, έναν κόσμο σαφώς πιο δίκαιο από αυτόν στον οποίο ζούμε τώρα. Είδαμε ότι σε αυτόν τον κόσμο δεν υπήρχε ανάγκη για στρατούς. Η ειρήνη, η δικαιοσύνη και η ελευθερία ήταν τόσο συνηθισμένες που κανείς δεν μιλούσε για αυτές ως μακρινές έννοιες, αλλά σαν πράγματα όπως το ψωμί, τα πουλιά, ο αέρας, το νερό, όπως το βιβλίο και η φωνή."

"Η επιλογή μας δεν είναι ανάμεσα στον πόλεμο και την ειρήνη, αλλά ανάμεσα στη ζωή με αξιοπρέπεια ή χωρίς..."

Σαν σήμερα, 19 Ιούνη 1957, γεννιέται ο εξεγερμένος υποδιοικητής Μάρκος (#SubcomandanteMarcos) του #EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional)

El Común (The Common) at the Foot of the Mountain

An Operating Room in the Lacandon Jungle

In the construction of what will be the headquarters of one of the operating rooms of COMÚN, there is something that is not made explicit in the images.  Among those working on the construction there are partisans, compañeros from the National Indigenous Congress and Zapatista compas; of various religions or without religion; of different generations, languages, roots, histories.

And not only.  There is, in this building in the making, the work, support and solidarity of people, groups, collectives, organizations and movements from various parts of the world, in addition to Mexico, who, with their effort, creativity and inventiveness, managed to pay for the materials.  Even native peoples from the Lacandon Jungle supported us with pay when they could not go to work.  And there was no shortage of people who offered gravel banks and even dump trucks to haul the materials.

In the design, let’s say the architectural design of the building, the following happened: we consulted with a professional architect who offered to carry out the project… in exchange for 500,000 pesos.  The Zapatista Interzona thought: “if, to make another new and better world, we do not depend on the great theoreticians and thinkers, but with our own thinking and our own practice we are achieving it, then let’s make a building according to what we want and with our knowledge”.  In this way, the knowledge of native communities was brought together, regardless of whether they are Zapatistas or not, or what religion they profess, or their political party, or their language, or their color, or their affective, sexual, emotional, social identity, their size, their weight, their calendar and their geography.

It is not finished, it is true.  And although it lacks walls, rooms, bathrooms, ceilings, equipment, instructors and the aforementioned instruments for surgery and laboratory, all the colors are already in its foundations.  It is not only the work of the Zapatistas, but of COMÚN.

In those trenches; the mixer whose ball bearing failed (and the mechanics have already dismantled the part and a commission has gone out to get the replacement); the partitions; the pozol; the rebar; the worker who fainted and was treated by the Zapatista autonomous health service (nothing serious, just an excess of worms); the simultaneous courses of Herbal Medicine, Hueseras (Bonesetters), Midwives, and General Health; the electric and mechanical bicycles of the health promoters who are attentive to those who are working on the construction; the workshop to repair them because they break down when they fall; the buckets to carry sand, gravel, cement and water; the temporary satellite internet that was installed so that the workers could be in touch with their families, their fields, their animals; the jokes and jokes in different languages and manners; the practical masonry workshop that the most judicious ones give to the youngsters who want to learn; the hope rekindled by the first rains that wet them, yes, but also give water to the land from which corn, beans, vegetables, grass for the cattle, pumpkins (ugh! ); the life that streams and rivers need; and the tercias and tercios documenting  images and sound.

In this whole, each part has its who, its what, its when, its how.

Each piece of the puzzle is necessary to complete it.  Each person is who they are and does not stop being who they are, but they become common to build something, a whole that benefits the parts without subordinating them, co-opting them, recruiting them, lecturing them, absorbing them.

-*-

Perhaps someone will, one day, theorize about the Common.  With more or less hard words, more or less complicated, more or less confusing.  Maybe even great theses, deep reflections, publications in articles, magazines, books, specialties, round tables, lectures, symposiums.  In short, those things that are done at tables and desks while, outside, life and death are battling.

But, if you ask the parties that now converge in those foundations of an operating room in the Lacandon Jungle.  If you ask them who or why they did this; why they contributed their work; why they sweated in the sun; why they got wet in the rain; why they gave their time and even paid to work; why they organized activities, collections, festivals, expositions and I don’t know what else, to obtain economic funds that cross oceans and borders, and that regardless of languages, geographies and calendars became common; why they committed themselves to something that seemed a delusion, a folly, a dream.

Perhaps they will answer -in many languages, in many colors, in many geographies, in many calendars, in many ways-: “For life.”

Because, it usually happens that there are times when small, apparently insignificant things -like a construction with no apparent defined profile, in the middle of that nothingness that the geographic charts indicate d“Selva Lacandona”- (far from social networks, academia and opinion journalism, mass media, political grid, the churches of the political parties, the coffee revolutions and counter-revolutions, the bibles and catechisms of capitalism and its supposed alternatives, the medium, large or small islands of each person’s daily life, the individual sorrows and joys, a multiverse that repeats in its variants the same nightmare), have a big soul and a collective heart.

And I tell you this because, watching the videos of the last RebelArte and RevelArte meeting, I saw a small model, a little wooden house whose front read “Quirófano Común” (Common Operating Room). That was a little more than a month ago. That was (a little wooden house), just a few weeks ago, what today is implied in the Lacandon Jungle.  El Común made it grow, walk, dress up, get ready and sit in an acahual, at the foot  of a mountain that, years ago, became a ship for life.

-*-

Who keeps track of the sweat, the tears, the sleeplessness, the illnesses, the hunger, the bookkeeping, the poster, the promotion, the organization of those who work today, near and far, in that corner?

Well, at least us, the Zapatista peoples.

Because, as SubMoy says, “he who does nothing, is he who sees nothing and hears nothing, and only looks at his navel and still says he knows the world”.

Okay.  Cheers and yes, maybe we don’t know how to put into words what the Common is, but we are learning to put it into practice. Or not?

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

El Capitán.
Junio del 2025.

P.S.- If the struggle is for life, then may life finally find a respite to flourish in that geography called Palestine, far away but so close to the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=19568

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

It Comes From Afar — Subcomandante Marcos

Old Antonio lights up his tobacco and his gaze. He speaks as if he were reading, inside himself, the book that some call history, or the past, or the previous, or the earlier, or the earliest.

Because there are books that cannot be looked at. It is only possible to listen to them, and in this way to keep them.

“Before geographies were born, when calendars were not yet born, the word was there to give an account of what walked and not. No borders, no races, no flags, no tastes, no tastes, no preferences, no languages, not who above, not who below.”

They all listen to Old Antonio. Some of them bring him a cup of coffee and he goes to the stove, not because it is cold, but because it is his way. And in listening to him, they read him. Just with glances, they take note in their collective heart.

“To look at the past we must learn to look at tomorrow. And the other way around. If not, sight is lost in the present, as if nothing came before, as if nothing came after.

Old Antonio rereads what his heart heard when there was not yet time:

“Memory was, it existed. They saw; instantly their gaze rose. They saw everything, they knew the whole world; when they looked, at the same instant their sight looked around, they saw everything, in the vault of the sky, on the surface of the earth. They saw everything hidden without moving. When they looked at the world, they also saw everything in it. Their knowledge was vast. Their thinking went beyond wood, stone, lakes, seas, mountains, valleys.

Truly, men who [were] to be loved: Warlock of Enveloping, Witch of the Night, Loot Keeper, Witch of the Moon.

They were then questioned by Those of Construction, Those of Formation. “What do you think of your being, do you not see, do you not hear? Your language, your walk, are they not good? Look then and see the world, if the mountains, the valleys do not appear: see in order to instruct yourselves,” they were told.

At once they saw the whole world, and then they gave thanks to the Builders, to the Teachers. “Indeed twice thank you, thrice thank you. We were born, we had a mouth, we had a face, we speak, we hear, we meditate, we move: we know well, we know far, near. We see the great, the small, in heaven, on earth: thanks [we give] to you! We were born, O Those of that which is Built, Those of that which is Formed: we exist, O our grandmother, O our grandfather,” they said, giving thanks for their construction, for their formation.

They finished knowing everything, looking at the four corners, at the four angles, in the sky, on earth.

Those of the Constructed. Those of the Formed, did not listen to this with pleasure.

“It is not good what our Constructed, our Formed say. They know everything, the great, the small,” they said.

So, The Procreators, the Begetters held council.

“How shall we now deal with them? Now that their eyes reach but a short distance! That they only see a very little of the face of the earth! It is not right what they say! Are they not only called Built, Formed? They will be as gods, if they do not beget, [if] they do not propagate, when germination happens, when the dawn exists; alone, they do not multiply. Let that be. Only let us undo a little what we wished them to be: it is not right what we say. Would they be equal to those who have made them, to those whose science extends far, to those who see all things?” was said by the Spirits of Heaven, Giant Master [Lightning], Lightning Footprint, Lightning Splendor, Dominators. Mighty Ones of Heaven. Procreators.  Begetters. Ancient Secret, Ancient Concealer, Builder, Shapers.

Thus they spoke when they remade the being of their construction, of their formation.

Then the eyes [of the four] were petrified by the Spirits of heaven, which veiled them like breath upon the face of a mirror; the eyes were troubled; they saw nothing but the near, only this was clear.

Thus was lost the Wisdom and all the Science of the four men, their beginnings, their start.

Thus they were first  built, they were first formed, our grandfathers, our fathers, by the Spirits of Heaven, the Spirits of Earth.”

— (Popol Vuh.  The Book of the Council. Anonymous. Translator: Miguel Ángel Asturias and J. M. González de Mendoza. Editorial Losada).

Old Antonio is silent. They keep the note and the look they save. Ixmucané, the Votán with nagua, guards and waits.

A girl opens her eyes as if a door were opening. The older woman repeats what her heart dictates: “Resistance and Rebellion. Fuck the pyramid”.

Above a new moon and below a mountain of age understand and nod. It is seen that they know something, because only they smile.

It is not raining yet and the earth is just like that, as if waiting…

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain
Mexico, May 2025
(Four years ago, at this time, a mountain turned ship entered the Atlantic Ocean. It carried in its womb Squadron 421. The Mountain sailed, just like that, as if awaiting an encounter. An encounter? In August? The first half?)

Original text published at Enlace Zapatista on May 28th, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=19390

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

#subcomandantemarcos #quote #antifa #art #classwar #anarchy #ausgov #politas

#subcomandantemarcos #quote #antifa #art #classwar #anarchy #ausgov #politas

#subcomandantemarcos #anticapitalism #antislavery #antiwork #fuckwork #antifa #classwar #ausgov #politas #humanrights #antiauthority #quote

#subcomandantemarcos #anticapitalism #antislavery #antiwork #fuckwork #antifa #classwar #ausgov #politas #humanrights #antiauthority #quote

Listen — Zapatista

To the artistic and intellectual community of Mexico and the World:

Listen… We know you are busy with Trump, but -I don’t know if you have noticed-, things are happening that would terrify the most grounded.  They are not isolated or extraordinary events, they are frequent, daily, “common”, “normal”.

Here we remember that in the past you used to organize and participate in concerts, exhibitions, auctions, raffles, articles and round tables to support the indigenous peoples.

We do not deny that we are no longer fashionable, nor that some of you found shelter and salary in the 4T or in the equivalents in your geographies.

But there are noble, just, true causes, right here, in the house across the street, around the corner, an hour away from the hustle and bustle of the city.  A girl, a boy, a girl, a young girl, a young man, an adult, a woman, someone behaving himself, disappears.  But someone remembers him, someone misses him, someone needs him, someone is looking for him.

The searchers’ collectives are not in the budget (although now they are trying to “buy” these people off by giving them a government post), they do not receive daily attention from the media, although their work is daily and has been going on for years, many, several administrations.  And it is necessary to open the crack of terror that defines the daily life of this nation as a real nightmare, so that people turn their eyes to them.  Yes, it will only be for a few days… until a new scandal covers the current one.

Unless you believe the same as the leader of the Senate (who maintains that in reality it could be a garage sale, or a business selling half-used shoes and clothes, and not the clothes of hundreds of murdered people), you must be moved by the testimonies, the images, the screams, the candles, the clumsy declarations of the authorities, their lack of empathy, their bet that this country is already armored against horror, death, and cynicism.

This cause, the one of searching and finding missing persons, is not a partisan cause.  Moreover, these collectives have made an effort to keep out the coyotes and vultures of the political parties and acronyms that accompany them.

It is something human, or it should be.  So, why not a campaign where the arts and the thinking are present in the face of that horror, yes, but also in the face of the nobility and dignity of those who seek truth and justice?

Ok, we know that you have planned your vacations, tours, engagements, birthdays, weddings, that the weather, the cold, the heat, the rain; but one day, just one day in which the arts and thought manifest themselves and let those searching people know that, at least, they have already found humanity in those of us who have this geography, Mexico, as a space of pain, of shame… and of struggle.

These people, men and women, are not looking for money (something that Mr. Beltrones will never understand), nor a position (although there is no lack of vultures around them), something that the 4T does not understand.

They are looking for their loved ones, the ones they are missing.

And whether they find them or not, they should have the satisfaction of having made us ALL see that these absentees are also our absentees.

Each one with his own, in his own geography, in his own way, with his knowledge, imagination, creativity.  A day to embrace those who search tirelessly.  A little light for those who seek to break the night of oblivion.  A day at least to remind them and remind us that shame, empathy, anger, dignity are also human.

So brothers and sisters of the Arts and Thought, if you keep silent now, nothing and no one will be able to find you.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

On behalf of the Zapatista girls, boys, women, other women, men and elders.

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés.
Mexico, March 2025.

Original text ublished by Enlace Zapatista on March 17th, 2025.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=17685

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

#firstworldproblems
Yesterday the dishwasher was not full and therefore it did not run... My medium bowls are not clean, I had to use a big bowl to pickle the vegetables...

The refrigerator is not magnetic, so the magnets don't stick there, but the dishwasher is...

a head #SubcomandanteMarcos with #Greedo 's body and vice versa.

#ProblemasDePrimerMundo
Ayer no se llenó la lavavajillas y por lo tanto no corrió... no fue encendida.. mis tazones medianos no estan limpios, tuve que usar un tazón grande para avinagrar las verduras...

el refrigerador no es magnético, entonces los imanes no pegan ahí, pero la lavavajillas lo es...

una cabeza de #SubComandanteMarcos con cuerdo de #Greedo y viceversa.

August 2024.

Actually, the letter is very brief.  It came from Cauca, in the geography called Colombia, with a request from our native brothers and sisters, the Nasa people.  I believe it was at the end of 2022.  Wait… yes, it arrived on October 31, 2022.  The Nasa brothers asked that an article be disseminated on the Enlace Zapatista page, that is, that it be published there.

I read the text carefully, compared the data and thought: “if it is published on the page, nobody is going to pay attention to it.  And I think that what interests them is not to have many “views”, but that what is said there is read and understood here, in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.  So we are going to do something better than publishing it on the Enlace Zapatista web page: I am going to pass it on to the Zapatista political organizational leadership.  Let them be the ones to value it for what it is: an impossible bridge.”  Why “impossible”?  You will see now:

In those days, the compañeras and compañeros in charge were already discussing and breaking down what, a year later, would be known as “El Común (The Common).”

The meetings were frequent, intense and exhausting.  I know this because I attended several of them and because of what Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés told me.

Since then, “The Common” was already looming on the horizon, but at that time the questions “What are we?”, “Where are we?”, “Where are we going?” were in the air.

The impact that the so-called “Tour for Life. Europe Chapter” had had on Zapatismo was taking effect.  For weeks, in Committee meetings and community assemblies, the various delegations visiting the varied geographies of Europe below and to the left, reported back based on their notes.

With and because of the delegations, Zapatismo had noted the destruction that “modernity” and “progress” produce in the “developed” territories, the misnamed “western civilization” – which, paradoxically, is to the east of us.  And they had found a likeness with those who are different in all senses: resistance and rebellion against the Hydra, the capitalist system.  The whole and the parts.

In the words of Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés, coordinator of this chapter of the Tour for Life: “It’s bad, we have to hurry.

The results were worrisome:

The accelerated process of destruction of the social fabric in Mexico; the evident failures of the electoral lefts (the “progressivism”) not only in transforming the bases of a criminal system, but also in administering it even in the midst of mediocrity (holding up “corruption” as the source and cause of all evils, instead of seeing it for what it is…an effect… and to also fail in the fight against it), the “seizure of Power” – in reality the arrival to the government by any means -, was nothing but a relay in the position of overseer (presumptuous, arrogant and authoritarian with the peon, and docile and humble with the landowner);

the increasingly strong and terrible protests of nature in the face of Capital’s wars of conquest;

the coordinated advance of so-called organized crime and mega-projects;

migration and displaced populations (developed countries besieged by the effects of wars and policies of conquest in the so-called “peripheral” territories);

cruel and sadistic violence against women and others (aggression against what is different as a new fanatical religion);

children turned into scapegoats (the system sacrificing the future of humanity on the altar of profit);

the resurgence of wars with national-fascist arguments;

the normalization of the catastrophe; the collapse therefore;
everything led to a terrifying conclusion: what we had foreseen and warned about decades before (and which was then the object of mockery and scorn), was coming true.

The future of then is now the present.

But you already know all this.  Whether you act accordingly is another matter.

-*-

But returning to the letter from Cauca that asked for dissemination of the text, I passed the text to Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés and called his attention to a part of it.

The Subcomandante read the text and the underlined part, looked up and asked me: “Did you tell them about it?  “Of course not,” I answered, ”I don’t know those brothers and sisters.”  The SubMoy: “It is as if they had been in the meetings.”

And the fact is that, in meetings of previous months, the committee, the Zapatista political-organizational leadership had been discussing the “isms.”

The underlined part of the text reads:

Along the way we learned that the voice that teaches is Uma Kiwe, our Mother Earth; she shows the way and the strategies… although there has been no shortage of those who want to become advisors to the process or give the line.  There was a moment, in 2016, when the process decided to open its doors to other struggles to talk and make them more visible. From there all the isms began to arrive, and everyone wanted to put in their line or evangelize our process with their theoretical content.

All these isms, ecologism, anarchism, Marxism, feminism, Maoism, institutionalism, developmentalism are all constructions and legacies of the West, and although in the territories they are being woven with indigenous knowledge, they bear the stamp of Western rationality. All the isms have been very valuable in supporting and joining this process; some people have been respectful; others, colonialist. At the time it was necessary to say: “all isms are welcome, but here we are and we will continue to be indigenous Nasas.” The liberation of Mother Earth goes beyond the sugar cane fields. The Nasa knowledge, which comes from Uma Kiwe, is the sustenance of this struggle, and if we have contradictions it is precisely because of that battle that takes place in the heart between our Nasa being and the western capitalist imposition.

Faced with the false dilemma between institution or revolution, the peoples propose alternative routes to inhabit this present; the coordinates of the debate transcend a Cartesian scheme, and show us, with their ways of inhabiting and organizing themselves in the minga, the assembly, the celebration, the tulpas and rituals, other possible ways of life. When we are asked: “Rebellion? Revolution? Reform? [we say that] ours is the wët wët fxi’zenxi.”

-*-

In the previous months’ meetings, the committees had been recapitulating their history and, in it, the passing of all the “isms” that had been and still are, giving orders.  None of them contributed anything worthwhile.  And of course, there were and will be people who only came to get what they could.  And they left when they could not get any more.  They were not “isms,” they only were, and are, scoundrels.  And some female scoundrels (to not forget gender parity).

Ok then.  Cheers and here, besides mud and dignity, what we have is a very different “ism”: Zapatismo.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain.
August 2024.

P.S.- The complete text is available at https://www.ecologiapolitica.info/63-andrea-fajardo-camacho/.

Original text published by Enlace Zapatista on August 29th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/08/31/images-of-impossible-bridges-iii-a-letter/

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

Let us recommence, then with some aphorisms from decades ago. See if what was said then, helps or not to understand what is happening now.

I

The aim of critical thinking is not to find the truth (and, therefore, to build a new alibi for the arbitrariness of the moment), but to question “truths”, confront them, dismantle them and show them for what they are: the idiotic opinion of one or several idiots (of course, not forgetting gender parity -) and with many or few followers.  Critical thinking is not only a theoretical position.  It is, above all, an ethical position in the face of knowledge and reality.

II

That which they call “History” (with capital letters) is only a corpse clumsily made-up by politicians and their scribes.  However, at the table of the politician in power, a skeleton does not sit.  Just a mirror.  The frame can be embellished, but the mirror will continue to reflect the same decomposition of reality.  The difference between caskets does not change the similarity of their contents.  When governments accuse the mirror, because it is concave, of distorting reality, they pretend to hide the fact that it is their gaze that excludes distortions.  The same gaze in which HE is the one who illuminates and colors everything.

The past history, with small letters, is nothing more than the antecedent of the present nightmare.  Today the death and destruction of tomorrow are being wrought.

III

The idea does not precede the matter.  On the contrary.  It is not a social or philosophical theory that gives rise to capitalism as the dominant system.  Nor to its different stages.  Social theory is a gigantic shelf of ideas to which the different political proposals turn in search of reasons that give sense to senselessness.  The dominant systems are but one and the same body with different garb in their presentations, but the same in their hypocrisy.

The fashionable social theory is only a momentary bestseller, which coexists with theories of self-help, of how to win friends (“followers” as they now say), and of justifications that the end justifies the means depending on whether it is conservatism or progressivism (which is nothing more than a soft conservatism).

What gives rise to capitalism is a crime.  And each stage of its development resembles that of a serial killer — each time it acquires more and more experience.  The work of the officialist theoreticians is to embellish this crime with some romanticism, adventure and, of course, frivolity.

In social theory, more often than not, the aim is not to understand in order to revolutionize, that is, to change the material bases of a system.  What the “theoreticians,” yesterday of the opposition and today pro-government, are looking for is a change in the confraternity.  That is why yesterday’s attachés are today’s cartoonists.  The names and offices change, but the defense is the same.  And, of course, the pay.  The reaction of the enlightened right is that of a couple scorned, indignant because others were chosen.  And those others, what they aspired to was to take the place of yesterday’s chosen ones.  They share the same intellectual anemia, so there is no problem.

Today’s historian adapts the historiography to the taste of the boss.  He goes to the bookshelf of ideas looking for characters, either to create villains or to construct heroes.  That female villains and heroines are now included is a benevolent concession to a feminism that settles for little or nothing.  The greatest fear of an historian today is to find groups, collectives or entire peoples responsible for a period. Who can sell a book with the biography of a non-individual?  Because that is a community.

Today’s historian sells alibis and is the promotional support of the papier-mâché cartoon of Power.  For him, history is only the set design that adorns his luminous present.  The literary equivalent of the lavish scenes about the indigenous peoples are the biographies and the investigations cultivated in the circles of Power.  Thus the calendars are adjusted to their convenience and the defeats of one empire against another are converted into victories.

The confusion is such that there are those who think, sustain and argue, that the Aztec Empire was the panacea of the indigenous peoples before the Spanish conquest, that Russia is the USSR and that China is a geography with communism as the dominant system; that the people are wise if they vote for Lula, Kirchner, PSOE, Macron, and Harris; and ignorant if they vote for Bolsonaro, Le Pen, Milei, Trump.  Few things are as prostituted as “democracy,” but none is more expensive.

In the unknown history of the capitulations, those who keep silent and mature (this is how it is taught in the school of cadres of the Party), go to the shelf of ideas to buy something that will serve them.  It is futile: the betrayal of principles and convictions is a capitulation, even if it is dressed up as Poulantzas 1.  The nickname “leftist” does not change the essence of a fact: it is complicity with a crime, the worst of all: that of a system against humanity.

V

In politics there are no dead people, only recidivist corpses.

As Pedro Infante used to say: the PRI is not dead, it lives on in the heart of all political parties.  That is why professional politicians change their acronyms as they change their underpants without any problem.  And even if they wash their underpants… or maybe not even.

There is no difference between progressive and right-wing politicians, just as there is no fundamental difference between good and bad bosses.  Both administer a plundering.

The political options do not change in their objectives (to have the government), nor in their tasks (to serve the economic Power).  Only the alibis change.

VI

In its current stage, the system carries out a new war of conquest, and its objective is to destroy / rebuild, depopulate / repopulate.  Destruction / depopulation and reconstruction / redevelopment of an area is the destination of that war.

The government of Israel is not avenging the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, it is destroying and depopulating a territory.  The business is not only in destruction and mass murder, it will be in reconstruction and redevelopment.  That is evident in the complicity of the Nation States of the world.  When the “nations” send military supplies to Israel they are not only supporting the genocide against the Palestinian people.  They are investing in that crime.  The dividends of this business will come later.

VII

There is no “good” or “bad” destruction.  The excuses and colors change, but the result is the same.  There are no substantial differences between Porfirio’s Isthmus Train, Fox’s Plan Puebla-Panama and Moreno’s Transisthmus Corridor.  Some failed and the other will fail as well.  Their objective is not welfare (other than that of big capital), nor the Porfirian modernization of dispossession: it is simply one more border among those that already exist.  And, like its counterparts, it will also be perforated.  And not because of the thousands of migrants, but because of the corruption and cynicism that, centuries later, today’s neo-enslavers discover: human trafficking is a business with an immense source of raw material (obtained through wars and the policies of the different governments).  And the capital investment is minimal: all you need is bureaucracy, cruelty and cynicism.  And there is an abundance of that in Capital and in the State.

The so-called mega-projects do not result in development.  They are only commercial corridors opened for organized crime to have new markets.  The dispute between rival cartels is not only for the trafficking of people and drugs, it is above all the dispute for the monopoly of the “Tren Maya” and “Corredor Transístmico” (Transisthmian Corridor).  Trees and animals cannot be charged fees, but the communities and companies that settle on this other useless border in the Mexican southeast can.

This ensures the growth of wars for territorial control, in which the hologram of the Nation State will be absent.

To start from the premise that the violence of what is called “Organized Crime” is an anomaly of the system is not only false, but also prevents us from understanding what is happening (and acting accordingly).  It is not an irregularity, but a consequence.

The objective is consensual: the State wants an open market (“free” of intruders -i.e. native peoples-), and the others want control of a territory.

In the image and likeness of what was called State Monopoly Capitalism, in which Capital waited for the State to create the conditions for its implementation and development, now it is what the military call a “pincer maneuver”: both – State and Organized Crime -, they hold a territory, destroy and depopulate it, and then big Capital enters to rebuild and reorder.

Those who say that there is an alliance between governments and organized crime are lying.  Just as there is no alliance between a company and its clients.  What there is is a simple – albeit costly – commercial operation: the State offers an absence and the cartel in question “buys” that absence and replaces the presence of the State in a locality, region, zone, country.  The gain is mutual between seller and buyer, the loss is for those who survive in those places.  “He who pays or loans, rules,” is the old aphorism that analysts and “social scientists” “forget.”

As for what is called “Organized Crime”, the State and Capital make a miscalculation (as usual): they assume that the employee will subject themselves to the agreement.  And not that he will operate on his own account.

As happened with the encouragement and creation of paramilitary groups, which, as they were made up of indigenous people, it was thought that they could be controlled.  After all, they were ignorant and manipulable people.  And then Acteal.  The Abejas are right, the Acteal massacre in 1997, with its cruelty and consequent impunity, was only the prelude to the current nightmare.  The State thinks that those of the so-called Organized Crime are its servants and come and go as instructed or forced.  It is because of this belief that they receive the surprises they suffer.

Now, try to answer this question: Why is it that in a federal state militarized for 30 years, cartels and their clashes now flourish with the governmental approval of those who invaded the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, claiming to avoid the “balkanization” of the republic?  Yes, it seems that the Mexican territory is more fragmented than ever.

(To be continued)

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
The Captain
August 2024.

Original text published by Enlace Zapatista on August 15th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/08/18/adagios/

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

Solidarity with what is far away – and I am not referring to geography, but to its place in the information – is not only convenient. It also allows for the most absurd and contradictory positions (such as justifying the murder of civilians, mostly children, who ignore that the present hell is not momentary, but also a promise of the future).

Solidarity with what is far away does not require commitment: it is others who suffer and die. For them, the alms of momentary attention, the heated discussion (ha) about one or two States, the historical references according to each position. Solidarity with what is close, on the other hand, demands something more than a comment on social networks. In the strange and small world of progressivism, the Kurds, Palestine and Ukraine are closer than Ostula and its stubborn resistance; the native communities of the Isthmus that rebel against the fate of being converted into customs guards on the new southern border of the American Union (because that, and nothing else, is this megaproject); the ecological destruction called the “Mayan Train”; the plundering of water throughout the geography; the imposition of thermoelectric plants; the rebellions against looting, impositions and destruction of the environment;…and the Searchers1.

And no, it is not about ignoring, due to geography, an injustice anywhere on the planet. No, it is about understanding and feeling that solidarity is not a fashion and a pose, but a commitment that curses.

Like hearing, vision… and the word

-*-

Of all absences, the most terrible and inhuman is the one that has no explanation.

The missing persons, their current situation and the indifference they provoke from above, are the overwhelming proof that frivolity and cynicism are virtues in the political work of the right… and of the progressive left.

The existence of people who seek truth and justice for those who are missing is what marks the modernity so vaunted up there: the hell in which these disappearances are brewing is terrible; and it is wonderful that those who search, revalue human dignity with their efforts.

In recent years, the most terrible and wonderful thing that this geography has given birth to is the profession of “searcher.”

What is the minimum to fulfill this demand for truth and justice for the missing? What is the “baseline”, -as the experts in administration would say-, in this request? A bone fragment? The shred of a faded blouse? A shoe without its pair? A resolution from the judiciary, the police, the government in power: “we did what we could”? The GPS signal blinking alone, desperate, useless?

A speech that, of course, ends with “I promise that the truth will be known before my government ends, no matter who falls”?

The searchers are not only looking for those who are missing, they are also looking for the shame, dignity and humanity that were lost with a government position, a line in the Excel spreadsheet of the payroll payment for surrenders.

What are those who refuse to respond to the Searchers’ demand afraid of? What is the basis for them to affirm that “the majority of the missing are missing through their own choice”? Is it that they have already investigated and those missing are missing voluntarily? So why not tell the Searchers: “Madam, your son, daughter, left because he found a partner” or “because you did not understand them”?

Don’t they have high technology (drones, satellites, ground-penetrating radar, digital files)? If not, why don’t they buy, rent, or borrow that equipment? Look in online stores… or on the Navy’s website. Just type in “search and rescue equipment” in the search box.

If they have the means to spy on their enemies (you get a Pegasus in every soldier), why don’t they use those technologies to find out if that person is missing “through their own choice”?

Or are the Searchers lying? So, it’s a lie that they go from one place to another, based on the information they receive? Do they suffer because they want to or because someone is missing? Those images where they appear, with spades and picks, in rural areas, are they edited with a digital application and, in reality, are they at home doing the math to see how they make ends meet? Did the Searchers, female and, of course, male, voluntarily disappear their sons, daughters, partners, fathers, mothers, family, with the sole purpose of harming the imaginary victim of the National Palace?

Perhaps they could, at least, ask those Searchers to search and find the shame that, up there, they lost for a government position… and a personal payroll.

-*-

You who work in the media, do you remember those times when journalism was about investigating, going to the scene of the events, interviewing the “parties involved,” challenging “self-censorship,” fighting in the editorial committee for publication – because you committed yourself to those victims to make their tragedy known; and you hold the value of the word in high regard, that is why you chose journalism -, returning to the scene and showing those grieving people the article (which cost you the umpteenth threat of dismissal – or its confirmation, of course)?

Do you remember when articles were taken from reality and not from social networks? Do you remember when the “PRESS” badge, more than pride and impunity, was a symbol of ethical commitment?

Wasn’t there a time when you fought for the article with other journalists and not with influencers who don’t even know how to write the description of their videos? Those days when the enemy was the gift, the bribe, the envelope with money, the unconfirmed information? And not like now, the death threats -not infrequently carried out-, or the virtual harassment of bots of one side or another. In addition, of course, to the morning court with which the Supreme Court hands out slaps and caresses.

Where are the great reports, the investigative journalism, the exclusive news, the incisive questions, the impeccable writing, the correct diction, the image where the news is not the journalist but reality?

Follow Ariadna’s thread, perhaps within the labyrinth you will find what made them choose journalism as a profession… and a curse.

-*-

Somewhere in the human heart there is something called “empathy.” This ability to “put oneself in the other’s shoes” is, in reality, the ability to “put oneself in the victim’s shoes.” Sometimes individually and increasingly collectively, this feeling goes further and confronts the need to “do something.”

But reality does not give rewards. If anything, it gives nightmares. So, it takes courage to say “I am and I feel that this is not fair and I have to say it or make it felt, especially to the victims.”

The achievements that are gained are few and far between. They seem small, but for the victims they are everything. As it will be for -let’s assume, without conceding-, José Díaz Gómez, who will surely be surprised when he sees all the messages of support and solidarity that, from the most unexpected corners of Mexico and the world, converged in the effort of that NGO -uncomfortable, as all NGOs should be-, which assumed the search for justice for what it is, that is, a duty.

His freedom was born of all those voices and actions that, mind you, converged in a simple but forceful demand, as old as humanity itself: freedom.

-*-

Look for the searchers. It occurs to me, I don’t know, that perhaps they are also looking for another tomorrow. And that, friends and enemies, is fighting for life.

Okay. Cheers and may you find them. It is urgent.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

The Captain.
August 2024.

P.S. I think it’s obvious, but if not, then we say it clearly: thank you.

Original article at Enlace Zapatista, August 8, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/08/10/a-pick-and-a-spade-on-solidarity-empathy-and-courage/

#chiapas #ezln #mexico #northAmerica #subcomandanteMarcos #zapatista

The Zapatistas smashed the neo-liberal triumphalism of the 90s and reinvigorated a global left that was still in retreat following the fall of the Soviet Union. Using the name of the legendary Emiliano Zapata, Indigenous communities in Southern Mexico built a rebellion that foisted them into the history books and reminded a generation that another world is possible.

#EZLN #Subcomandantemarcos #Zapatistas #Mexico

The Zapatistas smashed the neo-liberal triumphalism of the 90s and reinvigorated a global left that was still in retreat following the fall of the Soviet Union. Using the name of the legendary Emiliano Zapata, Indigenous communities in Southern Mexico built a rebellion that foisted them into the history books and reminded a generation that another world is possible.

#EZLN #Subcomandantemarcos #Zapatistas #Mexico

It's been 40 years since the Zapatista EZLN were founded, but they're being forced to evolve their strategies to the realities of gang violence that plagues the Mexico-Guatemala border region.

#zapatista #yabasta #subcomandantemarcos

Rumor in these streets is that a Chican@ compa from Boyle Heights took the original photo when the Zapatistas visited Tijuana in 2006 on the Other Campaign
#Zapatistas #EZLN #SupMarcos #SubcomandanteMarcos #CharcoalArt #Art