Originally published in
Spanish by the EZLN
************************************
Translated by irlandesa
Opening Remarks for the September 10 Preparation Meeting
Welcome compañeros, welcome compañeras, welcome all others:
First of all, we would like
to thank the compañeros
and compañeras
of the village of “Javier Hernandez” which is receiving us, and we would like
to congratulate them on one more anniversary of the recovery of these lands,
which were previously in the hands of the finqueros. And, along with them,
we also congratulate all the compañeros and compañeras who are now celebrating the same thing in the new
villages which were born on the ruins of the haciendas.
For those who don’t yet know,
I’ll explain the format of this meeting. First, we’ll speak some words, then
those who want to talk make a note of it, here at the Rebeldía table, and one by one
you’ll take your turn and we’re all going to listen. There is no limit as to
time or subject, but we all hope that the subject will be the Sixth Declaration
and the “Other Campaign.” The compañeros and compañeras of Rebeldía, in addition to us, will be taking notes of your
presentations in order to make a narrative that will be added to the ones from
the previous meetings and which can be seen by those who have supported the Sexta and who have joined the “Other Campaign,” whether or
not they’ve been able to attend one of the meetings.
I’m informing you that, as of
September 5, we have:
51
political organizations
95
indigenous organizations
145
social organizations
395
non-governmental organizations, collectives and groups
1371
persons nationally
314
persons internationally
Compañeros and compañeras:
The Sexta
and the “Other Campaign” present, for us, various challenges, discussions and
definitions. Some have already been showing up throughout these now 6
preparation meetings and the sporadic debate which has taken place.
There is, for example, the
debate about what it means to be of the left and what the work of the left
means. There is also the debate about whether the grouping together of the left
comes before, after or during the grouping together of a broader front. There
is the debate about whether the elections should be confronted with a critical
spirit or, on the contrary, to the drumbeat of the media and their polls. There
is the debate about whether an organization of organizations or a movement
should be built, a vertical and centralized structure or a horizontal network.
There is the debate about concepts and slogans. There is the debate about times
and places.
Now we would like to point
out the challenge of words and ways. Because we have said that the “Other
Campaign” proposes to listen and to build a space in order to listen. The Sexta assumes that the building of this listening is one stage
which will be followed by others. But this first stage is also very unique, not
just because it’s so against the grain, but also because it starts from a
commonality and moves towards something different in order to build a new,
still undefined, collective identity, a “something else.”
In order to understand what’s
going on up above, you have to look at it like one of those television programs
selling products, where some information is presented about the advantages of
the product being advertised, its price and the sales offer to those who are
being pressured to purchase it. Up above they talk and they promise, and that
means that there are those who listen to the promises, who believe and hope and
despair that what is promised will be fulfilled. The effect these promises seek
to produce is to first transform beliefs into votes, and then into passive
waiting. They are seasonal offers for a clientele who first must convince
themselves that their only option is to buy one product or the other, then that
their only participation is in choosing who will take their place in making the
decisions which will affect them, and, lastly, that they should organize their
emotional states into two time periods: three years for being disillusioned and
three years for looking for a new illusion.
In addition, they shouldn’t
question the fact that, as clients, they pay for promoting the product at a
scandalously inflated price, especially if one watches the “debate” between the
PAN “candidates” or the farce of the PRI’s internal democracy, or the
hysterical PRD clamor which shouts “thief, thief” while they maintain their
ties. And they all shout warnings about the right, the unmentionable, populism. With so much shouting perhaps some ingenuous
persons, who do exist, become confused and choose the least worst from the ads.
The client, the citizen, pays
for a pretense. Up above they pretend there are different programs, they
pretend there is competence, they pretend there is
intelligence and knowledge. They pretend there will be changes,
they pretend they will do something other than pretend.
Television rewards the
lucrative profits they receive, and they celebrate the histrionics of the
political class. The ridiculous ones of above put on their finest clothes, and
Carlos Salinas de Gortari files down the runway, as do Roberto Madrazo, Vicente Fox, someone from PAN (he should have a
name, but it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone), the great moneyed ones with
last names from the social pages and the rising stock market. The view of the
now exhausted progressive intellectuals edits and erases another image and
another name: Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Paying critical attention to his presence in the most perfect portrait of the
“modern” Mexican political class would obviously be playing into the right. And
when they recount the presence of salinistas embedded in the PRI and the PAN, they fail to
point out their delegates in the PRD. Why? Perhaps by remaining silent about
their existence and leadership roles they will simply cease to be and to act in
that party which presents itself and holds its anti-salinismo as its only difference,
given that that there are no differences in programs and principles? No. Let
the polls speak and analysis and debate be silent.
If anything sums up the
campaign of above it is the profound contempt they have for the people,
contempt for their intelligence, but also for their dignity.
Above is the spectacle, and
there is no longer any room for anything but spectators who are asked to not
even imagine that something else is necessary and possible. Laziness as media
offer: don’t do, I’ll do for you; don’t speak, I’ll speak for you; don’t
decide, I’ll decide for you; don’t think, I’ll act as if I’m thinking for you.
The “we”
that is growing more and more, below and to the left, wants something else, the
“Other Campaign.”
Below, with the “Other
Campaign,” we are trying to listen and to organize. Nothing
less, but nothing more. Nothing more than listening
and the opportunity to work, together, in doing what we decide, together, to
do. No redemption is promised other than that of work and struggle, no
compensation other than the satisfaction of having done one’s duty. Positions
are not being offered here, nor are budgets, but instead work and sacrifices. Neither
influence, recommendations nor servility are asked for here, instead
commitment, intelligence and imagination. Profits are not gained here, just chingas. Buying
is not demanded here, just thinking. Here the calendar will be fashioned by
looking, walking, listening, organizing, below and to the left.
And the words and ways are
below and to the left.
And there are the words that
mean different things according to who speaks them, to where they are spoken,
when they are spoken, to whom they are spoken and the way in which they are
spoken.
There is, for example, the
word “sorrow,” and it is not the same when it is spoken by a Mexican when he’s
crossing the border or when he’s detained on the other side by the Border
Patrol or by the Minutemen project. When an indigenous sees how he is tricked
simultaneously into being dispossessed of both land and culture. Or when a
worker or retired person or pensioner sees social security being dismantled by
decrees from those who say they are concerned about the workers.
Or a young person from the
city or countryside being persecuted because of his clothes;
Or a campesina woman sitting at a
table which abounds in nothing but deprivation;
Or a resident of one of the
belts of abject poverty which are growing in modern Mexican;
Or a worker learning for
himself about precariousness in the workplace;
Or an unemployed person
scouring the newspapers and offices without finding work;
Or a street being vendor
being fleeced by the police, officials and “leaders”;
Or a lesbian, a homosexual or
some other whose love is criminalized;
Or a democratic teacher being
attacked by officials, corrupt leaders and the media;
Or an artist who refuses to
produce garbage for the commercial circuit;
Or an activist in a political
organization being repressed for sinful words like “democracy,” “liberty” and
“justice”;
Or a mother, wife, daughter,
parent of a disappeared person or political prisoner looking for answers and
not finding them;
Or a fisherman confronting
the harshness of nature, the coyotes and the large consortiums;
Or a woman
who is persecuted, looked down upon and dispossessed for the sole crime of not
being a man;
Or an activist in an NGO who
risks life and reputation in his work;
Or a musician being
marginalized for the lyrics in his songs;
Or a religious person who
chose to walk below and to the left;
Or an indigenous person who
is exploited threefold: as a poor person, as a woman and as an indigenous;
Or a man, a woman, a boy, a
girl, in any of the many corners of the left of the
It is not the same, but it is
equal. By saying “sorrow” they are speaking of different sorrows, but that
sorrow finds the bridge that unites them in a system that produces that sorrow
and produces those who suffer from it: the capitalist system.
The Sixth Declaration has
chosen. It did not choose to hear with resignation and surrender in this life
in order to receive compensation in the other life, which is what the right
offers. Nor did it choose to hear with the impossible neutrality of a little
here, another bit there, neither one thing or the
other, which is being hawked by the center.
It chose to listen with the
reproach and indignation of the left. It chose to listen to the sorrow,
emphasizing the nature of exploitation, contempt and dispossession by what is
responsible for that sorrow: the capitalist system.
The “Other Campaign” should
listen to that difference in the word “sorrow” which is spoken below and to the
left by those who rebel against that sorrow. And it should learn the way in which that “sorrow” is spoken.
But the “Other Campaign”
should also build the bridge between that word and the different ones who give
it name. Because those who are listened to in the “Other Campaign” will know
that they name sorrow with others, and we will discover the equality of those
differences in the rebellion and resistance which they provoke.
We shall discover that that
sorrow is only eased through collective struggle, and it is only relieved
through a new social relationship.
That bridge is the National
Program of Struggle, of the left and anti-capitalist.
The “Other Campaign”
proposes, then, to organize the listening, organize the bridge, organize the
resistance, organize the rebellion, make it collective, and turn it into a
movement of profound and radical transformation, with those of below, from
below and for those of below.
The “Other Campaign” can be
summed up in that self-evident sentence: “What’s missing is missing.”
And what is missing is another
way of doing politics.
Welcome, then, to this attempt.
Thank you very much.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos