Zapatista Chronicles

by
Peggy McGonigle

John Ross is a poet, an award-winning journalist, a storyteller extraordinaire, and a passionate, funny guy. Of the recent presidential elections, he quipped, “Mexico had a U.S. election, and the U.S. had a Mexican election.”He’s lived in Mexico since the 1985 earthquake. He’s active with movements of urban slum dwellers and landless campesinos. His new book (his fourth) is a 350-page, wonderfully written chronicle of an amazing six and a half years of a struggle against racism and European impositions on the indigenas (indigenous peoples) of the Americas that is 508 years old. It is called The War Against Oblivion: Zapatista Chronicles 1994 - 2000.

Speaking recently to an audience in Vancouver, British Columbia about his new book, John Ross told the story of Claudia, a small Indian woman, the spokesperson of the Zapatista autonomous community of La Realidad (the Reality), on the eve of the new millennium. Ross said, “Claudia spoke bitterly of the celebration of the humiliation of the poor by those who would globalize this world. She said, ‘This is not a celebration of the new millennium — this is a celebration of the seventh year of our guerra contra el olvido’ — our war against forgetfulness, against oblivion.”

In that statement, Claudia gave Ross the title for his new book, a book that he describes as “cram-packed with snapshots of what has come down in the past six and a half years.” Ross says, “It’s been six and a half years of amazing stuff — amazing tragedy and amazing resistance and sometimes amazing comedy.”

Ross organizes these snapshots of what’s been called the most unorthodox guerilla uprising in history by following the seasons of the year because the Zapatistas are Mayan Indian farmers, and their lives are interwoven with the seasons and the land.

The snapshots include the bitterly cold first hour of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Jan. 1, 1994 when Indians wearing rubber boots and ski masks and toting guns, some of them toy rifles carved from wood, declared war on the Mexican government from San Cristobal in the southeastern state of Chiapas, Mexico.

The snapshots tell us of blood shed during the spring planting seasons in Chiapas that generally have a body count of one dead Indian a day as campesino organizations seek to sow land stolen from them by white ranchers and their guards.

We are told in vivid detail of the mudsplattering downpour that drenched 6,000 human rights activists, journalists, and folks against corporate globalization (affectionately called “globalphobes”) who’d been invited to dialogue deep in the jungle home of the Zapatistas during the first National Democratic Convention in the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas state.

And we are shown the snapshot of the saddest Christmas, the Christmas when the Abejas of Acteal, a coffee collective who call themselves “The Bees,” buried their dead — 19 women, 20 children and seven men — slaughtered victims of the low intensity war of the Mexican and U.S. governments against the indigenous peoples of Chiapas.

There are 70,000 troops in the state of Chiapas, camped just outside the Zapatista autonomous communities. Roads have been cut down into the canyons and jungle so that the machinery of war can encircle the Zapatistas in an ever tightening trap. Zapatista women walk right up to the sea of armed, helmeted men and push at them, tell them to go home.

One gets a real sense of the 22 months of painstaking negotiations between the Indians and the duplicitous Zedillo government; a sense of the differences between people who make decisions via consensus, where everyone has an equal voice and all voices are listened to, and those who make decisions from the top, down. As one falls into the rhythm of the book, one begins to feel the Zapatista way of relating to people and the earth, a way that is full of meaning and takes its time.

The negotiators of the mal gobierno (bad government) exclaim, “How can one negotiate with people who are always running off to the jungle to consult!” Yet the Zapatistas build consensus not only within their autonomous communities but also within civil society in Mexico and throughout the world.

In Mexico, 97 million people live in poverty, and 27 million live in extreme poverty, meaning that they are slowly starving to death. Chiapas, Mexico is home to the poorest of the poor. John Ross has written The War Against Oblivion so that the heroic resistance of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation will not be forgotten. He says, “Those who would globalize and privatize this world don’t want us to remember the resistance of the poorest of the poor.”

But we who read this book will remember it. We’re given clear, real examples of life at its paradoxical best. The Zapatistas say, “We were invisible to you for 500 years, 500 years of looting by the beast, 500 years of two Mexicos — one Mexico which produces wealth, another which appropriates that wealth. By covering our faces, we become visible.”

The Zapatistas, the poorest of the poor, show us how real leaders lead — by obeying the will of the people. The will of the people, arrived at via consensus that listens to all voices and sees all colors, even sees and respects the choices of those peoples who are the colors of the earth.

Peggy McGonigle resides in Paso Robles with her husband and two children.