Genealogy of the Zapatista Commons

Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés

Well then,

As we talked about as compañeros in our meetings, I want to add to the genealogy, about how the idea, the thought was born of what is the common.

The truth is then, we had to do a lot of studies and a lot of watching and a lot of listening.

It is a little difficult, how to say it, because it did take us years, as we were saying.

We based ourselves a lot on what the life of our great-grandparents was like.

That is where we discovered many things, up to 2023.

So I am going to try to draw it, how we saw it.

It is not an invention, what we are saying, that we studied what our great-grandparents did 100 years ago, so for example, from what they told us, from the community before, that is, 80, 90, 100 years ago.

That is the community, right?

So, as I said and our colleagues said yesterday, they got infected; they went out in a mass, a lot of them, which we now call common, right?

They got infected and not just like that, because the word “infect” just like the flu, cough and those things, right? No, they worked on it.

They went to talk to others, with their brothers, well, in a group.

That’s how we did it, right? We all had to go out, right? To defend ourselves, in a group, right?

Well, that’s how they got infected.

The contagion is organized. It’s not just like that, just the word “infect” and that’s it.

No.

That’s what they told us, right? That’s how it grew, like that.

Well, then there began to be communities, ejidos, colonies, whatever you call it.

Well, then here in this community, this or this town or those towns, right?

Then there, they realized that then they could go out to where the bestiality of the bosses is, right?

Then they began to organize themselves like that.

It became an organization to make their milpa in common. And then their coffee plantations in common. And then their pastures in common. And among other jobs, right?

The joke is that then they are there, in groups, in a pile here, for anything when it comes, so, the foreman, the steward, or the foreman, they all pile on him, right?

That made them organize, right? The same system of the boss forced them, in that case, right?

So, as time went by, that’s what we told you, as time went by, they began to make their own particular milpa, coffee plantation, right?

The land is common. That, look at that. They could make their cornfields, their coffee plantations, their bean fields, their sugar cane fields, their pineapple plantations wherever.

So the land is common, right?

And they lived like that for many years, right?

This is what the compañeros were talking about. They saw that as a danger for the bosses, because then they are in a community.

The land is common and they also do common work, right?

They do it, the common work, right? Because that’s where they got the land tax, the ownership, right?

They didn’t take it out of their pockets, each and everyone, right? That was life like that, right?

So what happened after that, right?

So this is what the comrades try to explain, that then they didn’t like the bosses, right.

They didn’t like that thing about being in common, right? And that they work in common, right?

That’s where this started now, yes, how to divide it?

How can we get rid of this, get organized? Well, that’s it.

So then, that’s where the legalization of the land came from, which is illegal, right?

And that’s where the idea of ​​them being there came from, they have to be evicted, it has to be legal, but what they want is the payment, the ownership, well no, the projects no, that’s what they told us, that when the projects started, then they manipulate with the paper, that is, what is the certificate of the agrarian rights, right?

So they said, eh, that’s how they started to divide the towns, because then the towns were united, right?