How Big is the World?
Zapatista Army of National
Liberation
After a day of preparation
meetings for the Other Campaign (it was September, it was dawn, there was rain from a far-off cloud), we were heading
towards the hut where our things were when we ran into a citizen who all of a
sudden came out with: "Listen, Sup, what are the Zapatistas
proposing?" Without even stopping, I answered: "Changing
the world." We reached the hut and began getting things ready in
order to leave. Insurgenta Erika waited until I
was alone. She approached me and said "Listen, Sup, the world is
very big," as if she were trying to make me realize what nonsense I was
proposing and that I didn't, in reality, know what I was saying when I'd said what
I'd said. Following the custom of responding to a question with another
question, I came out with:
"How
big?"
She kept looking at me,
and she answered almost tenderly: "Very big."
I insisted:
"Yes, but how big?"
She thought about it
for a minute and said: "Much bigger than
Then they told us we
had to go. When we had gotten back, in the barracks now and after making
Penguin comfortable, Erika came over to me, carrying a globe, the kind they use
in elementary schools. She put it on the ground and told me:
"Look, Sup, here, in this little piece, there's
"Hmm," I
said, lighting my pipe in order to gain some time.
Erika insisted:
"Now you've seen that it's very big?"
"Yes, but we're
not going to change it all by ourselves, we're going to change it with many compañeros and compañeras from
everywhere." At that point they called the guard. Showing that
I'd learned, she shot back at me before she left: "How many compañeros and compañeras?"
How big is the world?
In
the Tehuaca'n valley, in the Sierra Negra, in the Sierra Norte, in the suburban areas of
In Altepexi,
a young woman replied: More than 12 hours a day of work in the maquiladora, working on days off, no benefits, or
insurance, or Christmas bonus, or profit sharing. Authoritarianism
and bad treatment by the manager or line supervisor, being punished by not
being paid when I get sick, seeing my name on a black list so they won't give
me work in any maquiladora. If we
mobilize, the owner closes down and goes someplace else. Transportation
is very bad, and I get back to the house where I live really late. I look
at the light bill, the water bill, taxes, I do the
sums and see there's not enough. Realizing that there's
not even any water to drink, that the plumbing doesn't work and that the street
stinks. And the next day, after sleeping badly and being poorly
fed, back to work. The world is as big as the rage I feel against all
this.
A young Mixtec indigenous: My papa went to the
In San Miguel Tzinacapan an elderly couple look
at each other and answer almost in unison: the world is the size of our
effort to change it.
An indigenous campesino from the Sierra Negra,
a veteran of all the dislocations, except the dislocation of history: It
has to be very big, that's why we need to make our organization grow.
In Ixtepec,
Sierra Norte: The world is the size of the swinishness of the bad
governments and of the Antorcha Campesina,
which is just prejudiced against the campesino and is
still poisoning the earth.
In Huitziltepec,
from a small autonomous school, a rebel television station is broadcasting a
truth: the world is so large that it has room for the history of the
community and of its desire and struggle to continue looking out at the
universe with dignity. A lady, an indigenous artisan, from the same round
as the departed Comandanta Ramona, adds
off-mike: "The world is as big as the injustice we feel, because
they pay us a pittance for what we do, and we watch the things we need just
pass us by, because there's not enough."
In the neighborhood of Granja: It can't be very big, because it seems as if
there's no room for poor children, they just scold us, persecute and beat us,
and we're just trying to make enough to eat.
In Coronango:
As big as the world is, it's dying from the neoliberal pollution of the land,
water, air. It's breaking down, because that's what our grandparents
said, that when the community breaks down, the world breaks down.
In San Mati'as Cocoyotla: It's as
big as the government's lack of shame, which is simply destroying what we do as
workers. Now we have to organize in order to defend ourselves from the
government which is supposed to serve us. Now they see that they are
without shame.
In Puebla,
but in the other Puebla: The world isn't so big
because what the rich already have isn't enough for them, and now they want to
take away from us poor people what little we have.
Again, another
A young artist:
It's big, but it's rotten. They extort money from us for being young
people. In this world it's a crime to be young.
A neighbor:
However big it may be, it's small for the rich, because they are invading
communal lands, ejidos,
popular neighborhoods. As if there's no longer room for their shopping
centers and their luxuries, and they're putting them on our lands. The
same way, I believe, that there's no room for us, those of below.
A worker: The
world is as big as the cynicism of the corrupt leaders. And they still
say they're for the defense of the workers. And up above they've got
their shit together: whether it's the owner, the official or the
pro-management union leader, no matter what new things they say. They
should make one of those landfills, a garbage dump, and put all of them in it
together. Or not, better not, because they'd certainly pollute
everything. And then if we were to put them in jail, the criminals would
riot because even they don't want to live next to those bastards.
Now it's dawn in this
other
"Do you have
tobacco?"
"That little
voice, that little voice," I thought.
"What little
voice? I see you're jealous of my masculine and seductive voice,"
Durito protested.
There was no longer any
room for doubt, and so, with more resignation than enthusiasm, I said:
"Durito...!"
"Not
'Durito'! I am the greatest righter of wrongs, the savior of the
helpless, the comforter of the defenseless, the hope of the weak, the
unattainable dream of women, the favorite poster of children, the object of
men's unspeakable jealousy, the..."
"Stop it, stop
it! You sound like a candidate in an election campaign," I told
Durito, trying to interrupt him. Uselessly, as can be seen, because he
continued:
"...the
most gallant of that race which has embraced knight errantry: Don Durito
of the Lacandona SA of CV of RL. And authorized by the good government juntas."
As he said this, Durito
showed me a decal on his shell which read: "Authorized by the
Charlie Parker Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipality (MAREZ)."
"Charlie
Parker? I didn't know we had a MAREZ with that name, at least we didn't
when I left," I said disconcertedly.
"Of course, I
established it just before I left there and came to your aid," Durito
said.
"How
odd, I asked them to send me tobacco, not a beetle," I
responded-protested.
"I am not a beetle, I am a knight errant who has come to get you out of
the predicament you have found yourself in."
"Me? Predicament?"
"Yes, do not act
like Mario Marín's "precious hero" in the
face of those recordings which revealed his true moral caliber. Are you
in a predicament or not?"
"Well,
predicament, what's called a predicament, then...yes, I'm in a
predicament."
"You see?
Perhaps you were not longing for me, the very best of the knights
errant, to come to your aid?"
I thought for barely an
instant and responded:
"Well, the truth
is, no."
"Come, do not conceal that great pleasure, the huge joy and
the unbridled enthusiasm which exists in your heart upon seeing me once
again."
"I prefer to
conceal it," I said resignedly.
"Fine,
fine, enough of the welcoming fiestas and fireworks. Who is the
scoundrel I should defeat with the arm I have below and to the left?
Where are the Kamel Nacif, Succar Kuri so-and-sos and others
of such low ilk?"
"No scoundrels and
nothing to do with that ilk of swine. I have to answer a question."
"Come on,"
Durito pressed.
"How big is the
world?" I asked.
"Well, there is a
short version and a long version of the answer. Which do you want?"
I looked at my
watch. It was
"The
short version."
"What do you mean, the short version! Do you think I have been
following your tracks through eight states of the
"Fine," I
said, resigned. "The long version then."
"That's it, my
big-nosed nomad! Take this down."
I picked up my pen and
notebook. Durito dictated:
"If you look at it
from above, the world is small and the color green of the dollar. It fits
perfectly in the price indexes and the valuations of a stock market, in the
profits of a transnational, in the election polls of a country which has
suffered the hijacking of its dignity, in the cosmopolitan calculator which
adds capital and subtracts lives, mountains, rivers, seas, springs, histories,
entire civilizations, in the miniscule brain of George W. Bush, in the
shortsightedness of savage capitalism badly dressed up in neoliberal
attire. Seen from above, the world is very small because it disregards
persons and, in their place, there is a bank account number, with no movement
other than that of deposits.
But if you look at it
from below, the world stretches so far that one look is not enough to encompass
it, instead many looks are necessary in order to complete it. Seen from
below, the world abounds in worlds, almost all of them painted with the color
of dislocation, poverty, despair, death. The world below grows sideways,
especially to the left side, and it has many colors, almost as many as persons
and histories. And it grows backwards, to the history which the world
below made. And it grows towards itself with the struggles that
illuminate it, even though the light from above goes out. And it sounds,
even though the silence of above crushes it. And it grows forward,
divining in every heart the morrow that will be given birth by those who below
are who they are. Seen from below, the world is so big that many worlds
fit, and, even so, there is space left over, for example, for a jail.
Or, in summary, seen
from above, the world shrinks, and nothing fits in it other than
injustice. And, seen from below, the world is so spacious that there is
room for joy, music, song, dance, dignified work, justice, everyone's opinions
and thoughts, no matter how different they are if below they are what they
are."
I had barely been able
to write it down. I re-read Durito's response,
and I asked him:
"And what is the
short version?"
"The short version
is the following: the world is as big as the heart which first hurts and
then struggles, along with everyone from below and to the left."
Durito left. I
continued writing while the moon waned in the heavens with the night's damp
caress...
I would like to venture
a response. Imagining that I, with my hands, undo her hair and her
desire, that I envelope her ear with a sigh, and, while my lips move up and
down her hills, understanding that the world is as large as is my thirst for
her belly.
Or,
more decorously, trying to say that the world is as large as the delirium to
make it "otherly," as the ear that is needed to embrace all the
voices of below, as this other collective desire to go against the tide,
uniting rebellions of below, while above they separate solitudes.
The world is as big as
the prickly plant of indignation which we raise,
knowing the flower of tomorrow will be born from it. And, in that
tomorrow, the
That is all. Your
responses should be presented on February 30 in triplicate: one for your
conscience, another for the Other Campaign and another with a heading that
clearly states: Warning, for those of above who believe, naively, that
they are eternal.
From
the other
Sup Marcos
Sixth Committee of the
EZLN
Originally published in
Spanish by the Sixth Committee of the EZLN
*********************************************
Translated by irlandesa