Communiqué from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission—Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN
Mexico,
September 15th and 16th, 2008
To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:
To the adherents of the Zezta Interazional:
To the People of Mexico:
To the Peoples of the World:
Compañeras and Compañeros:
Brothers and Sisters:
Once again here’s our word.
This is what we see, this is what we are looking at.
This has come to our ears, to our brown heart.
I.
Up there, they intend to repeat their history.
They once again want to impose on us their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.
When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them.
They steal our work, our strength.
They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life.
The cities pursue and expel us.
The countryside dies and we along with it.
Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police.
In the world, we are illegal, undocumented, unwanted.
We are pursued.
Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life.
And up there they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment.
Down here we are being left with nothing.
Except rage.
And dignity.
There is no ear for our pain, except that of the people like us.
We are no one.
We are alone, and just with our dignity and our rage.
Rage and dignity are our bridges, our languages.
Let us listen to each other then, let us know each other.
Let our rage grow and become hope.
Let our dignity take root again and breed another world.
We have seen and listened.
Our voice is small to be the echo of that word, our gaze small for such an amount of rage, a rage with such dignity.
We need to see each other, look at each other, talk to each other, listen to each other.
We are others, the other.
If this world doesn’t have a place for us, then another world must be made.
With no other tool than our rage, no other material than our dignity.
We still must find each other, know each other.
What is lack is yet to come… Falta lo que falta…
II.
Now, three years after the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, the EZLN has undertaken a collective assessment, nourished by the broad horizon that our compañeros of the Other Campaign in Mexico and the Zezta Internazional across the world have given us.
What we have seen and heard is not little, sometimes directly, sometimes through the words and the gaze of others.
The rage that we felt and the dignity that we found was so great that now we think we are smaller than what we thought before.
In Mexico and in the five continents we have found what we sensed we would when we began our sixth step: there is another world, there is another path.
If the catastrophe that is coming is to be avoided and humanity is to have another chance, it will be because these others, down here and on the left, have not only resisted, but are already sketching the outline of something else.
Something different from what is going on up there.
In the impossible geometry of political power, the fundamentalisms are distributed evenly: the right wing becomes ultra-right and the institutional left wing becomes the impossible cultured right wing. Those who make up the progressive media complain that the fanatics on the mainstream press censure them, twist their words and slander their leader. But they at the same time censure, twist the words, slander, and remain silent before any movement that hasn’t bowed down to the dictates of their ringleaders. And without shame they condemn and acquit to the rhythm of a senseless media rating. Fanatics on one and other side fight over lies dressed as truths and crimes are gauged according to the media time they occupy. But this is nothing more than a pale reflection of what is happening in politics.
Weariness in the face of cynicism and incompetence on behalf of the traditional political classes has been turning into rage. Sometimes this rage still hopes for change following the usual paths and places, and it crashes head-on either with the disappointment which immobilizes it or an arbitrary force which tramples it. The unsettled and brutal North goes back to its old ways. When it is not sponsoring electoral fraud (as in Mexico), it is promoting, encouraging, and financing state coups (as now attempted in Bolivia and Venezuela). War continues to be its primary and favored form of international diplomacy. Iraq and Afghanistan burn, but, to the despair of those up there, they are not consumed.
The impositions of hegemony and homogeneity on a global scale find their witches’ apprentices in nations, in regions, and in small localities, which rehearse the impossible historic return to a past where fanaticism was law and dogma, science. Meanwhile, the governing political classes have found in the world of bright lights an adequate disguise to hide their full participation in organized crime.
Sickened by so much greed, the planet begins to pay the unpayable bill of its destruction. But “natural” disasters are also class issues and the devastation is felt most by those who have nothing and are no one. Faced with this, the stupidity of Power has no limits: millions and millions of dollars are dedicated to the manufacture of new weapons and installation of more military bases. The power of capital does not worry about training teachers, doctors, engineers, but rather soldiers. It doesn’t prepare constructors, but rather destructors.
And those who oppose this are pursued, incarcerated, murdered.
In Mexico, farmers who have defended their land are in prison (San Salvador Atenco); in Italy those who opposed the installation of military bases are pursued and treated as terrorists; in the France of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”, humans are only free, equal, and brothers if their papers say so; in Greece being young is a vice that must be eradicated; again in Mexico, but now in that city of the same name, young people are criminalized and murdered and nothing is done because it is not on the agenda dictated by those up there. Meanwhile, a legitimate referendum is converted into a shameful way for an assassin-governor to wash his hands off a situation. In the Spain of the modern European Union, publications are closed and a language, Euskera, is criminalized —they think that by killing the word they can kill those who speak it—; in that Asia that is so close, the demands of the peasants are met with armored nonsense; in that arrogant American Union, born of immigrant blood, the “other colors” who work there are pursued and killed; in the long wound that is Latin America, the brown blood that sustains it, is despised and humiliated; in the rebellious Caribbean, a people, the Cuban people, have to add up to the disgrace of a natural hazard that of an imperial embargo that is nothing other than an unpunished crime.
And in all of the corners of the world’s geography, and in all of the days of its calendars, those who work, those who make things run, are plundered, despised, exploited, repressed.
But sometimes, many times, as many times that a smile sets off, that rage looks for its own paths, new paths, other paths. And the “no” that they raise now not only resists, but begins to propose, to propose itself.
Since our public appearance, now almost 15 years ago, it has been our goal to be a bridge on which rebellions can walk back and forth.
Sometimes we have achieved this, sometimes we haven’t.
Now we see and we feel not only the rebellious resistance that, as sister and compañera, stays at our side and encourages our steps.
Now there is something that wasn’t there before, or that we hadn’t been able to see.
There is a creative rage.
A rage that paints all of the colors of the paths down below and on the left on the five continents….
III.
FOR THESE REASONS, AND AS PART OF THE ACTS COMMEMMORATING THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF THE ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION, THE 15 YEARS SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR AGAINST OBLIVION, THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE JUNTAS DE BUEN GOBIERNO (GOOD GOVERNMENT COUNCILS), AND THE THIRD YEAR OF THE OTHER CAMPAIGN AND THE ZEZTA INTERNAZIONAL, THE MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND ELDERLY OF THE EZLN CONVOKE ALL OF THE REBELLIOUS OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD TO THE:
FIRST GLOBAL “FESTIVAL DE LA DIGNA RABIA”
WITH THE THEME:
ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER PATH: DOWN HERE AND ON THE LEFT
TO BE HELD AT THE FOLLOWING VENUES AND ON THE FOLLOWING DATES
- THE OTHER MEXICO CITY, FEDERAL DISTRICT, December 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th, 2008. IN LIENZO CHARRO DE LA ASOCIACIÓN LOS CHARROS REYES DE IZTAPALAPA, Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente-UNOPII, Avenida Guelatao # 50, Colonia Álvaro Obregón, Delegación Iztapalapa, close to Guelatao metro station, where an exposition will be held. AND IN THE HEADQUARTERS OF UNÍOS, Dr. Carmona y Valle street #32, colonia Doctores, close to Cuauhtemoc metro station, where other activities will be held.
- CARACOL OF OVENTIC, CHIAPAS, home of the Junta de Buen Gobierno CORAZÓN CÉNTRICO DE LOS ZAPATISTAS DELANTE DEL MUNDO, December 31st 2008, January 1st 2009
- THE CITY OF SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS, IN CIDECI, located on the Camino Real de San Juan Chamula s/n, Colonia Nueva Maravilla. January 2nd, 3rd, 4th.
SOME OF THE SUBTHEMES OF THE FESTIVAL WILL BE:
ANOTHER COUNTRYSIDE
ANOTHER CITY
ANOTHER COMMUNICATION
ANOTHER ART AND ANOTHER CULTURE
ANOTHER POLITICS
ANOTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENT
ANOTHER HISTORY
ANOTHER SEXUALITY
THE FESTIVAL “ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER PATH: DOWN HERE AND ON THE LEFT” WILL HAVE THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERISTICS:
1. In Mexico City, a national and international exposition will be installed where every struggle, every experience, every rage, will have a space where it can set up a stand and show its struggle and its rage. This way we can all see, hear, and know them.
2. In zapatista territory, dignity and rage will become art and culture, music and song, because it’s also possible to dance to the tune of rebellion. And with words, pain will become hope.
3. In San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the word will go back and forth in order to give birth to new words and give strength and reason to rage.
4. The national and international groups, collectives, and organizations that participate in the festival will be only those who are invited to do so. To this end, the Sixth Commission of the EZLN has started to consult other political and social organizations, as well as groups and collectives of anarchists, libertarians, alternative communication, art and culture, defense of human rights, sexworkers, intellectual social activists, ex political prisoners, all adherents of the Sixth Declaration; and with groups, collectives, and organizations of other countries, all part of the Zezta Internazional. The criteria for invitations and participations will be made after these consultations.
5. For the roundtables and conferences, the EZLN will invite social organizers, thinkers, and leaders of anticapitalist projects from Mexico and around the world. The list of invitees will be released later on.
6. More details regarding what we think the “Festival de la Digna Rabia” will be like, will be announced in due time (that is, when we have an approximate idea of the problem we have gotten ourselves and yourselves into).
That’s all for now.
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ATENCO!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, September of 2008.
Sixth Commission—Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN
Mexico,
September 15th and 16th, 2008
To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:
To the adherents of the Zezta Interazional:
To the People of Mexico:
To the Peoples of the World:
Compañeras and Compañeros:
Brothers and Sisters:
Once again here’s our word.
This is what we see, this is what we are looking at.
This has come to our ears, to our brown heart.
I.
Up there, they intend to repeat their history.
They once again want to impose on us their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.
When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them.
They steal our work, our strength.
They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life.
The cities pursue and expel us.
The countryside dies and we along with it.
Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police.
In the world, we are illegal, undocumented, unwanted.
We are pursued.
Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life.
And up there they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment.
Down here we are being left with nothing.
Except rage.
And dignity.
There is no ear for our pain, except that of the people like us.
We are no one.
We are alone, and just with our dignity and our rage.
Rage and dignity are our bridges, our languages.
Let us listen to each other then, let us know each other.
Let our rage grow and become hope.
Let our dignity take root again and breed another world.
We have seen and listened.
Our voice is small to be the echo of that word, our gaze small for such an amount of rage, a rage with such dignity.
We need to see each other, look at each other, talk to each other, listen to each other.
We are others, the other.
If this world doesn’t have a place for us, then another world must be made.
With no other tool than our rage, no other material than our dignity.
We still must find each other, know each other.
What is lack is yet to come… Falta lo que falta…
II.
Now, three years after the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, the EZLN has undertaken a collective assessment, nourished by the broad horizon that our compañeros of the Other Campaign in Mexico and the Zezta Internazional across the world have given us.
What we have seen and heard is not little, sometimes directly, sometimes through the words and the gaze of others.
The rage that we felt and the dignity that we found was so great that now we think we are smaller than what we thought before.
In Mexico and in the five continents we have found what we sensed we would when we began our sixth step: there is another world, there is another path.
If the catastrophe that is coming is to be avoided and humanity is to have another chance, it will be because these others, down here and on the left, have not only resisted, but are already sketching the outline of something else.
Something different from what is going on up there.
In the impossible geometry of political power, the fundamentalisms are distributed evenly: the right wing becomes ultra-right and the institutional left wing becomes the impossible cultured right wing. Those who make up the progressive media complain that the fanatics on the mainstream press censure them, twist their words and slander their leader. But they at the same time censure, twist the words, slander, and remain silent before any movement that hasn’t bowed down to the dictates of their ringleaders. And without shame they condemn and acquit to the rhythm of a senseless media rating. Fanatics on one and other side fight over lies dressed as truths and crimes are gauged according to the media time they occupy. But this is nothing more than a pale reflection of what is happening in politics.
Weariness in the face of cynicism and incompetence on behalf of the traditional political classes has been turning into rage. Sometimes this rage still hopes for change following the usual paths and places, and it crashes head-on either with the disappointment which immobilizes it or an arbitrary force which tramples it. The unsettled and brutal North goes back to its old ways. When it is not sponsoring electoral fraud (as in Mexico), it is promoting, encouraging, and financing state coups (as now attempted in Bolivia and Venezuela). War continues to be its primary and favored form of international diplomacy. Iraq and Afghanistan burn, but, to the despair of those up there, they are not consumed.
The impositions of hegemony and homogeneity on a global scale find their witches’ apprentices in nations, in regions, and in small localities, which rehearse the impossible historic return to a past where fanaticism was law and dogma, science. Meanwhile, the governing political classes have found in the world of bright lights an adequate disguise to hide their full participation in organized crime.
Sickened by so much greed, the planet begins to pay the unpayable bill of its destruction. But “natural” disasters are also class issues and the devastation is felt most by those who have nothing and are no one. Faced with this, the stupidity of Power has no limits: millions and millions of dollars are dedicated to the manufacture of new weapons and installation of more military bases. The power of capital does not worry about training teachers, doctors, engineers, but rather soldiers. It doesn’t prepare constructors, but rather destructors.
And those who oppose this are pursued, incarcerated, murdered.
In Mexico, farmers who have defended their land are in prison (San Salvador Atenco); in Italy those who opposed the installation of military bases are pursued and treated as terrorists; in the France of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”, humans are only free, equal, and brothers if their papers say so; in Greece being young is a vice that must be eradicated; again in Mexico, but now in that city of the same name, young people are criminalized and murdered and nothing is done because it is not on the agenda dictated by those up there. Meanwhile, a legitimate referendum is converted into a shameful way for an assassin-governor to wash his hands off a situation. In the Spain of the modern European Union, publications are closed and a language, Euskera, is criminalized —they think that by killing the word they can kill those who speak it—; in that Asia that is so close, the demands of the peasants are met with armored nonsense; in that arrogant American Union, born of immigrant blood, the “other colors” who work there are pursued and killed; in the long wound that is Latin America, the brown blood that sustains it, is despised and humiliated; in the rebellious Caribbean, a people, the Cuban people, have to add up to the disgrace of a natural hazard that of an imperial embargo that is nothing other than an unpunished crime.
And in all of the corners of the world’s geography, and in all of the days of its calendars, those who work, those who make things run, are plundered, despised, exploited, repressed.
But sometimes, many times, as many times that a smile sets off, that rage looks for its own paths, new paths, other paths. And the “no” that they raise now not only resists, but begins to propose, to propose itself.
Since our public appearance, now almost 15 years ago, it has been our goal to be a bridge on which rebellions can walk back and forth.
Sometimes we have achieved this, sometimes we haven’t.
Now we see and we feel not only the rebellious resistance that, as sister and compañera, stays at our side and encourages our steps.
Now there is something that wasn’t there before, or that we hadn’t been able to see.
There is a creative rage.
A rage that paints all of the colors of the paths down below and on the left on the five continents….
III.
FOR THESE REASONS, AND AS PART OF THE ACTS COMMEMMORATING THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF THE ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION, THE 15 YEARS SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR AGAINST OBLIVION, THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE JUNTAS DE BUEN GOBIERNO (GOOD GOVERNMENT COUNCILS), AND THE THIRD YEAR OF THE OTHER CAMPAIGN AND THE ZEZTA INTERNAZIONAL, THE MEN, WOMEN, CHILDREN, AND ELDERLY OF THE EZLN CONVOKE ALL OF THE REBELLIOUS OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD TO THE:
FIRST GLOBAL “FESTIVAL DE LA DIGNA RABIA”
WITH THE THEME:
ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER PATH: DOWN HERE AND ON THE LEFT
TO BE HELD AT THE FOLLOWING VENUES AND ON THE FOLLOWING DATES
- THE OTHER MEXICO CITY, FEDERAL DISTRICT, December 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th, 2008. IN LIENZO CHARRO DE LA ASOCIACIÓN LOS CHARROS REYES DE IZTAPALAPA, Frente Popular Francisco Villa Independiente-UNOPII, Avenida Guelatao # 50, Colonia Álvaro Obregón, Delegación Iztapalapa, close to Guelatao metro station, where an exposition will be held. AND IN THE HEADQUARTERS OF UNÍOS, Dr. Carmona y Valle street #32, colonia Doctores, close to Cuauhtemoc metro station, where other activities will be held.
- CARACOL OF OVENTIC, CHIAPAS, home of the Junta de Buen Gobierno CORAZÓN CÉNTRICO DE LOS ZAPATISTAS DELANTE DEL MUNDO, December 31st 2008, January 1st 2009
- THE CITY OF SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS, IN CIDECI, located on the Camino Real de San Juan Chamula s/n, Colonia Nueva Maravilla. January 2nd, 3rd, 4th.
SOME OF THE SUBTHEMES OF THE FESTIVAL WILL BE:
ANOTHER COUNTRYSIDE
ANOTHER CITY
ANOTHER COMMUNICATION
ANOTHER ART AND ANOTHER CULTURE
ANOTHER POLITICS
ANOTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENT
ANOTHER HISTORY
ANOTHER SEXUALITY
THE FESTIVAL “ANOTHER WORLD, ANOTHER PATH: DOWN HERE AND ON THE LEFT” WILL HAVE THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERISTICS:
1. In Mexico City, a national and international exposition will be installed where every struggle, every experience, every rage, will have a space where it can set up a stand and show its struggle and its rage. This way we can all see, hear, and know them.
2. In zapatista territory, dignity and rage will become art and culture, music and song, because it’s also possible to dance to the tune of rebellion. And with words, pain will become hope.
3. In San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the word will go back and forth in order to give birth to new words and give strength and reason to rage.
4. The national and international groups, collectives, and organizations that participate in the festival will be only those who are invited to do so. To this end, the Sixth Commission of the EZLN has started to consult other political and social organizations, as well as groups and collectives of anarchists, libertarians, alternative communication, art and culture, defense of human rights, sexworkers, intellectual social activists, ex political prisoners, all adherents of the Sixth Declaration; and with groups, collectives, and organizations of other countries, all part of the Zezta Internazional. The criteria for invitations and participations will be made after these consultations.
5. For the roundtables and conferences, the EZLN will invite social organizers, thinkers, and leaders of anticapitalist projects from Mexico and around the world. The list of invitees will be released later on.
6. More details regarding what we think the “Festival de la Digna Rabia” will be like, will be announced in due time (that is, when we have an approximate idea of the problem we have gotten ourselves and yourselves into).
That’s all for now.
LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ATENCO!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, September of 2008.
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