A Small History of Senor Ik'
Originally published in Spanish
by the EZLN
*************************************
Translated by irlandesa
[The following is a
translation of one part of the Opening Remarks at the Fourth Preparatory
Meeting for the "other campaign" in the new town of Juan Diego,
Chiapas, August 27
A Small History of Seņor Ik'
By Subcomandante
Insurgente Marcos
This part of the land where
we are meeting is now called Juan Diego Nuevo Poblado. It is part of the Francisco Go'mez Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipality. But it wasn't always called that. Previously it was a finca
by the name of Santa Rita. The finca had around 6000 hectares, and its last owner was Seņor Adolfo Na'jera Domi'nguez, from Comita'n,
Thirteen years ago, when the
residents of the community of San Miguel wanted to go and fish, to gather
snails or to cut firewood, Adolfo, the finquero, wouldn't
let them. In order to prevent them, he
used his white guards, cowboys who carried weapons in order to threaten the
indigenous who didn't respect the ban.
The wire fence, which their parents and grandparents had worked on for 12
hours a day, along with the weapons of the finca's
guards, prevented the residents of San Miguel from having access to the river
and from traveling the trails and paths that cross through the finca. Neither they
nor their animals could put one foot on any of the 6000 hectares.
When every so often a horse
or other animal would cross over, the finquero's orders
were clear: whatever was on his land was
his property. And so the animals were
stolen and concealed someplace until the rightful owner became resigned to his
loss.
That was how it was: the indigenous had raised,
from sunup to sundown (and not figuratively), a fence that kept them out. Out of the good lands, of modernity,
of justice.
The community of San Miguel
then held an assembly and reached agreement to ask for a talk with Seņor Adolfo Na'jera. The committee went to talk with him, and they
politely suggested that he allow the population of San Miguel to have access to
the river and to not bother the animals that passed through his finca. The trail
that divides San Miguel from the Santa Rita finca was
right here, some 200 meters from where we're meeting with you right now. The finquero never
understood, and he didn't pay any attention to them. He mocked them, he mistreated them, he
threatened them and he ran them off. The
next day he ordered the barbed wire fence to be reinforced. In order to do that, he contracted the
indigenous from San Manuel themselves - at 14 pesos for 12 hour work days. Mathematics aren't
my strong suit, but it seems to me that the distance between the grandparents
and the grandchildren would be some 30 or 40 years and a difference of seven
pesos. I don't know much about economics
either, but I believe that's called exploitation.
The community met once again,
and they made some calculations: on one side, hundreds of indigenous, with a
few hectares of bad lands, rocky and sloping, where
you couldn't even walk. The indigenous'
lands were like the ones you can see there:
a part of the hillside of the sierra of Corralche'n. On the other side of the trail was one person
with 6000 hectares of good land, on flat, fertile land and with good water.
They said that then the
community's assembly made calculations:
little and bad for many on one side; a lot and good for just one on the
other side. Then they did what all campesinos do: they
asked for plots of land. And, like the
song says, years went by asking for land.
Their committees traveled to all the federal government offices, turned
in all kinds of papers, cooperated with everyone in order to send committees
everywhere, even though the same thing would have happened if they hadn't
gone. There was never any resolution to their
demands for land.
Then a man came to talk with
just some of the residents. He was
indigenous like them, dark like them, Tzeltal like
them, Mexican like them. His nom de guerre
was Hugo, but he was called Seņor Ik',
playing with the two meanings of the word Ik', which
in Tzeltal can mean "black" and
"wind." Seņor
Ik's name was actually Francisco Go'mez. With his unhurried speech, he explained exploitation,
contempt, repression. He spoke of
rebellion and of organization.
"There is a word," Seņor Ik' told them, "zapatista,
and it says that the land belongs to the one who works it, and we should
organize ourselves and fight for our liberty as campesinos
and as indigenous and as the Mexicans we are." It was probably already dawn. What Seņor Ik' was talking about was secret, and it had to be guarded.
That was why Seņor Ik' walked by night, spoke
by night, appeared by night. Those who listened to him that night - when
morning had not managed to even tint the darkness of the night - said they were
in agreement. Seņor
Ik' was leaving then, and a compa~ero gave him some pozol and
asked him: "And what is our organization
called?" Seņor
Ik' put the pozol in his
little rucksack and answered him:
"We all call ourselves the Zapatista Army of National Liberation."
Seņor Ik' left. He walked other nights, appeared in other
villages and other dawns found him talking with indigenous in the area. First a few, then dozens,
then entire villages, regions.
But it wasn't always like that.
The moment arrived when Seņor Ik' no longer spoke, instead he listened. He listened to the outrage and the fury. He had heard this before, but now there was a
difference: it was a fury and an outrage
organized collectively.
Seņor Ik' listened and walked by
night again, and on another dawn he was in our barracks, in front of me, having
a cup of coffee without sugar, not because that was how we liked it, but
because there wasn't any. Seņor Ik' began his talk with a
report about his last trip through villages and assemblies. It was not a report about he had said, but
about what he had seen and heard. He finished. We remained silent. Seņor Ik' began recounting, apparently irrelevantly, another
dawn, many years before, when we had just met and were camping close to his
village. At that time I had told him the
history of Ulysses' fight against the giant with a single eye: Polifemo. Seņor Ik' had laughed delightedly when I narrated the part where
Ulysses says he's called "nobody" and defeats the Cyclops. Seņor Ik' recalled the narrative in his own way, and he was recounting
it to me again. Suddenly he was silent,
and he lit a cigarette with a stick he ignited in the wood stove. He held the burning branch for a bit, and
then he looked me in the eye and told me:
"Oi, compa~ero subcomandante, that's why I believe now it's starting to be
the hour of nobody."
Like Seņor Ik', there were dozens of compa~eros then, natural leaders of their communities and
regions, doing the same thing he was doing and saying the same thing he was
saying: "now it's starting to be
the hour of nobody." It was the
year 1992. Then we held the consulta. War was
voted.
In 1993 we were preparing
ourselves. And so May arrived, May
23. Up there, in that sierra you can see
easily from here, we had an insurgent barracks.
It was called El Calabazas. A column of federales
had entered the ca~ada, and, basing themselves at La Garrucha, they went up into the sierra. Our forces and the federales
clashed. After a few fights, our troops
withdrew and were taken in by the residents of San Miguel and then accompanied
by them to a secure area.
All the EZLN withdrew
then. To our way of thinking, the
uprising should begin when we decided, not the enemy. We had long ago learned that we should never
subject ourselves to the times of the powerful,
instead we had to follow our own calendar and impose it on those of above. We have continued to do that. That is why
they become so exasperated with our way.
On the first of January of
1994, it was already daytime, and the columns of the
EZLN fighters were traveling along that highway heading towards Ocosingo. More than 1200 men and women of the Third
Regiment of the Zapatista Infantry, plus others from the Fifth Regiment, passed through these and other lands of the Selva Lacandona. They took the weapons away from the finqueros' white guards, and they used them to take the
municipal seat. After several days of fighting
in the Ocosingo market against federal army air
transport troops, the zapatista troops withdrew. Afterwards,
what happened happened, and most of you know it
because you were major actors.
All the fincas
in this region were recovered, and, after 1995, their lands were divided up by
the agrarian commission of the Francisco Go'mez Rebel
Zapatista Autonomous Municipality (MAREZ).
Without asking anyone's permission, the zapatista
indigenous knocked down the fence that surrounded the Santa Rita finca, and the lands were distributed among the residents
of San Miguel and of the Ach' Lumal village, which
means new land.
Then the compa~eros
met and they made calculations again, but not of hectares, rather of
deaths. In the Ocosingo
battle of
Naming themselves,
not after the death, but after the fight.