"Freedom is like the morning. There are those who wait for it asleep, and there are others that stay awake and walk through the night to reach it." - Subcomandante Marcos

#Quotes #SubcomandanteMarcos #Zapatismo #EZLN #Freedom #Liberty

Un semillero zapatista para derribar la gran pirámide del capitalismo

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://arainfo.org/un-semillero-zapatista-para-derribar-la-gran-piramide-del-capitalismo/

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

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

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

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