Capitán Insurgente Marcos
December 28, 2024
CIDECI-Unitierra
SCLC, Chiapas, Mexico

I am going to ask you to collaborate with me in an exercise that will be helpful for the talks that will be held these days.

I have to confess that I suffer from a progressive and incurable disease. So I’m going to ask you to raise your hand if you want me to tell you what the disease is and what stage it is in.

You don’t want to know? You’re going to ruin my writing.

Now I’m going to ask you to raise your hand if you don’t want to know anything about it.

Well, you’re not–you’re not well programmed, compañeras. You need to, you need to reboot.

Well, we now have an audience of X number of people consulted regarding a point. At the time I write this, I have no idea which option won.

So I’m going to continue assuming that the majority wants to know about this disease. So I’m going to please you.

I’ve suffered from this disease for more than three decades. To be more exact, 30 years, 11 months and 28 days.

Mine is an incurable and progressive disease, and it must have a name, or it will one day. But it consists of my inability to speak in front of more than six people.

The number is not innocent. It is a very small minority. That is to say, there is at least one situation that leaves me speechless, without words. Which in my case, and given my background, is a real feat.

Forced by circumstances, following a January 1st almost 31 years ago, I had to face this limitation by hiding behind a balaclava or behind some letters.

I know that I have said before that the reason for the balaclava was because I was very handsome and that I do not want to be harassed, that I detest lascivious glances running over my shapely figure.

But the truth is this: I cannot speak in front of large groups without being hidden, protected, and shielded behind the balaclava.

As the Zapatista peoples have taught me, I had to fight this lack of normality and find strength in it.

I tried then to turn myself into a bridge, the frame of a window to look out at the Zapatista communities and for the communities to peer at the world outside, at your world. Whether I succeeded or not is not the issue.

It is probable, yes, that I am lying and that I do not have that illness and that in reality I have only invented it for some purpose that remains hidden up until now, and which I think will be revealed in these days.

For example, I can tell you now that I have another illness. It consists of the loss of immediate memory, that is, I do not remember what just happened or what I just did.

So if I meet someone and respond to their greeting with a strange look, do not think that I deny knowing who they are. It’s just that I have forgotten.

I know that a good part of you, those who are listening to me now and those who will read me later, also suffer from it, and that it has a name, and it is called social network syndrome.

Oh I know. It’s not just social media, but they exemplify and synthesize it. In the modernity we suffer from, this is not a defect, rather it is a test of the speed of adaptation.

The faster you forget the immediate, the more apt you are to assimilate a present that changes at a dizzying velocity thanks to the speed of communications. So fast that it seems, or at least we assume, to be a simulated reality.

The everything everywhere all at once.

No, it is not the Maya Aleph, as described in the Popol Vuh and which provoked the envy of the first gods, who gave birth to the world and then took away from human beings the capacity for simultaneous knowledge of the whole and the parts.

Because hundreds of years before Borges, the Maya people already imagined all the geographies and all the calendars in one point, all the worlds in one world.

In this case of modernity, or whatever you call it, the whole imposes itself on the parts, dominates them, subjugates them, and thus molds, reconstructs them, discards them, and replaces them with others.

For example, Palestine.

Where is Palestine? The answer may be under the rubble of a hospital or a school, or in the corpse of an infant, in the death of those who bring humanitarian aid–for that reason, because they are human and do not understand how it is possible that a word, let’s say “Hamas,” sustains such a massacre.

And then they start to argue over the size of the crimes: the one by Hamas on October 7 because, it must be said, the murder and kidnapping of civilians is a crime, that is justified by decades of oppression, they say, or that of the Israeli government in supposed retaliation or revenge for October 7.

Which is bigger? Which revenge is more just? Are there good crimes and bad crimes?

And that’s how they have us, arguing over the size of the crimes.

Which is bigger? Which is smaller? Which is older? Which is newer?

And debating arguments to support one or the other, forced to raise our hands for one of the options: the motives of the wolf or those of the shepherds. Let’s vote.

And this discussion takes place far from the horror and the immediate is forgotten: a war of total annihilation of an entire people, a genocide supported by the modern fundamentalism of manipulated forgetfulness.

And that people, buried under rubble, where blood is already part of the postcard in the media and social networks, is abandoned because that small detail has been forgotten, the one called war.

War is a word that the victims understand well and that the perpetrators hide behind doctrines of security, religions, academic (that is, propagandistic) arguments, capital investments.

This is how we manage to forget that what is urgent, important, necessary, is to stop the war.

But Palestine can also be found elsewhere:

Below, more below, far from leaders supposedly opposed to each other but who share the same appetite for a territory, far from the vanguards that are so advanced they can no longer be seen by their followers.

Below, where perhaps in a girl, in a boy, the imagination of another world begins to germinate.

Between death and destruction it is difficult for that seed to grow, but it is possible.

And perhaps in that world, where the imagination of that childhood grows, the tree of freedom appears.

Because when we say free Palestine, it is that, free from war, but also free from those who tell that people what they should do and how and what they should not do.

In that Palestine, freedom means deciding without pressure and taking responsibility for that decision And for that, dear friends and enemies, it is necessary to stop the war.

And now we want to, even if it is difficult because of the distance and forgetfulness, to reach our word of encouragement to that girl, to that boy who survives in Palestine.

Our word, although small, because it comes from the heart of a group of transgressors of the law of forgetfulness and professionals of remembering, whispers resistance and rebellion.

And down here, whispering is also another way of shouting.

-*-

But Palestine is already fading behind other times. Putin, Zelinski, China, Trump, organized crime, disorganized crime (i.e. governments), pandemics, natural disasters, fashions and ways, murdered journalists, influences dying in the line of duty.

That is, taking a selfie on the edge of an abyss.

Artificial intelligence increases the world production of orphans. Tourist trips to immediate space. The projects.

A young girl, let’s say, 20 years old who only remains in a photo because she disappeared. Because she was a woman and she was young.

The searchers, always the searchers.

For each fact, a forgetfulness.

That is, the religion of forgetfulness.

For example, located in the hypothesis of the loss of immediate memory. I don’t remember what I’m doing here and who you are.

I also don’t remember if you are going to talk to me or I am going to talk to you against what you might think.

Listening would imply a greater responsibility, even if only in appearance, it is more difficult to speak than to listen.

So, I think that you have come to talk to me, so I suppose that if you have come from so far and have cancelled or adjusted your plans for these seasons, have you prepared to tell me what you are going to tell me?

I don’t think so. I am an optimist in that sense, that you will come and here to see what you can think of to tell me. So that gives me a responsibility.

These people, you have prepared yourselves, you have cancelled your tourist package on the Mayan train, which was actually planned to confirm that no trees have been cut down, that there is no environmental impact, that no cenotes have been damaged, nor has it affected the fauna and flora that the aborigines use that term to give themselves the appearance of a coffee anthropologist.

They are excited to become pawns on the land they inherited from their predecessors, that the so-called organized crime has no intention of settling in that stretch, and of course it is a commercial success and people fight for tickets as if it were a concert by the Mastuerzo.

Did I say that? I don’t remember. Maybe the automatic corrector put the Mastuerzo when I clearly wrote Taylor Swift, or whatever, or whoever or whoever is in fashion, said to be prepared about a subject.

Let’s say that the subject in question is that things are not as bad as they seem, that everything is going to be fine, that there is a promising future and that happiness exists and is today.

So they have prepared themselves. They bring their notebook with plenty of bibliographical citations from authors with strange names, from prestigious universities and research centers, because they have a reputation to protect.

They are not going to quote a schizophrenic beetle or a girl who defies the laws of physics on a bicycle while learning to ride on a gravel road.

Nor an old man of Mayan blood determined to rescue ancient memory.

So I, in turn, have prepared myself. I also have my notebook or my cell phone to record, and if there is a way, take a selfie with you. Of course, that is not enough. So I have prepared myself with one. I went or it is said I do not know how to say it, with one or date.

In this way I can choose between the incognito mode or if I aspire to disturb. It is the dream to choose something that highlights my appetizing and well-formed body.

I do not find the obligatory checkmate, but it must be because I finish them in the texts of the day after I have also shown different types of look the doubtful one of what the hell is he saying the skeptic of that you say, the flirt of your self.

A temperature below zero, the open air. I don’t know, think about it. The funny one about what clever joke, the boring one about what time do you go out to the pozol, the urgent one about I have to go to the bathroom but without it being obvious that I have to go to the bathroom. In short, I arrive crazy with joy with my load of commonplaces. I sit down and wait with poorly concealed anxiety for your words.

You have a good memory, so you know that you did not come to speak, but to listen, but I imagine you are responsible and consistent. I imagine that you know that the Zapatista people give great value to the word, to the expressed and to the listened to.

So you have come this far, to the moment of listening or reading, knowing that you have a responsibility.

That is to say, in the face of what you have heard, to answer the question of what about you?

If I suddenly recover immediate memory and realize that it is my turn to speak and yours to listen, and I have not prepared myself, then you will be right if you are disappointed.

But if you do not prepare to respond, that is, to take responsibility for what you will hear, then taking responsibility does not necessarily mean agreeing or coinciding with what you have heard.

It is also about taking responsibility for agreeing with some things and not others, or rejecting everything, choosing the opposite. Contradictory. Well, here we are. You have cancelled your plans to skate in the Zócalo and I have cancelled my plans to be in a warm and welcoming place. Who is disappointing? Who? Responsibility. This responsibility is what we have asked of those we invited to participate with their words.

We asked you two things in particular to take into account: that you would also address the support bases and autonomous authorities of the Zapatista communities, almost 900, who are back there, so that you can be seated and that you will not resort to bibliographical citations, that is, that you speak without mediation and tricks and that you take responsibility for your words.

For better or worse, the topic to which we have summoned you is a crime. Do we hope that with your help, that of participants, listeners and readers, we can establish whether there is a crime and if there is, who is the criminal, what is or was his motive? Who or who are the victims? That is to say, it is not up to you, we do not call you to pontificate, to elaborate and to repeat slogans.

We call you to give clues for an investigation. We assume that the notes to describe the crime, the crime, will lead us to delve deeper into the characterization of the criminal, discover his motivations, the tools used to commit it, find and describe the victims. In short, we call you to a police investigation. We may be able, and with the appropriate tools, to reach one or several conclusions, but we will not be able to go beyond that.

This stage is not about giving a verdict of innocence or guilt, nor is it about passing sentence and seeing that the sanction is carried out. And this is so because those who listen to us or read us and we, of course, have already gone through this whole process, we have determined that the criminal is a system, that the victim is humanity, that the verdict is guilty and that the sentence is to make it disappear, destroy it, annihilate it.

And that is what we are doing in Spain, committed, willing and determined, even though we are a minority, that is why we are signatories of the so-called Declaration for Life. We investigated, therefore, and came to the conclusion that the culprit of the crime is not a religion, a race, a colour, a language, a culture, a way, a gender, but rather an entire system that uses religions, races, colours, languages, cultures, ways and genders to perpetuate crime.

But since this is about critical thinking, that is, its ethics, its purpose, its tools, its commitment, have we raised a question and what if we are wrong? What if what we have characterised as a crime is just a setback, a passing crisis? What if the culprit is not a system, but bad luck, a whim of the gods or an inescapable destiny?

And if it is not necessary to destroy this system, but it is possible to reform it, adapt it, humanize it, clean its sharp edges, then doubt, doubt should be one of the driving forces of critical thinking. So, why not start by doubting our own place, our capabilities, our tools? Ergo, let us start from the fact that we do not have the remotest idea of ​​why what is happening is happening, nor who is responsible, nor who the victims are, nor what should be done.

In short, we have changed the ITU question, which was the most disturbing and compromising of us, which I am referring to, to make collective organizations, groups, movements, individual persons, minorities who, despite being so distant, different and contrary, have found something in common: the description of a crime, the characterization of the criminal, the counting of the victims and the commitment, the search for and realization of justice.

Will we lose something if we restart the investigation of the crime in progress? I don’t know about you, but if I had known Zapatismo at the beginning or during those 31 years, it would inspire confidence in me: a movement that is capable of questioning itself.

I would admire its severe self-criticism and its taking it to the point of annulling an entire organizational structure and trying something else.

It would inspire admiration, respect and desire. What’s more, I would ask to learn about Zapatismo, although of course, I suppose I would have to prove that I can be part of them.

It is clear that the proposed mission is much bigger than what we can venture to do in these days, so in this discreet way we are announcing to you that there will be more meetings like this one and we will announce later how they will be arranged.

Some invited people could not attend this meeting for health reasons, as Fidel Castro did not say. Yes, yesterday we were an entire town, today we are a specialty hospital.

Among those who could not attend are Alicia Castellanos, Aida Hernández, María Eugenia Sánchez, Mariana Mora, Magda Gómez, Raúl Silvestre, Arturo Anguiano, Gilberto López Rivas, Luis Hernández Navarro and other people who, together with thinkers that we are sounding out to invite them to future meetings, may give us clues about crime, the criminal and the victims.

And among all of them there is a young man, a young man whom we appreciate as the Zapatista movement that we are and for whom I have personal respect and affection who has not been able to attend and I have asked whoever reads to send their words and that even if I read them, it is he who will answer for them, so read them, read to you now the participation of Jorge Alonso…

December 28, 2024
Cideci-Unitierra
SCLC, Chiapas, México

Original Spanish: Encuentros de Resistencia y Rebeldía. 28, 29 y 30 de diciembre de 2024, Cideci-Unitierra. SCLC, Chiapas, México