Portrait of a young Zapatista rebel

Journalist Ioan Grillo offers the personal story of a rank and file member of the Zapatista rebels. This flesh and blood account puts a human face on the 14-year old uprising that helped bring down seven decades of one party rule in Mexico, revive indigenous rights in the Americas and inspire hope for social change in Europe.

By Ioan Grillo

LA GARRUCHA, Chiapas -- Patricio has three heroes: Che Guevara, Jesus Christ and Bruce Lee. He is most enthusiastic about Bruce Lee. He saw the kung fu master’s classic movie “Enter the Dragon” on DVD at the ramshackle Zapatista township of La Garrucha. It is the only film he has ever seen. He loved the Hong Kong hacker instantly and has become an avid kung fu fan, practicing his high kicks after he finishes work on his village’s corn and coffee fields.

We are sitting in La Garrucha now having a late night chat; me a journalist from Brighton, England and him a Tzotzil campesino and Zapatista from the mountains of southern Mexico. We’re both dressed in baseball caps, jeans and t-shirts. He trekked for a day through mountainous jungle to arrive here. I took a plane from Mexico City to Chiapas and then drove for six hours into the bush, two of them down a bumpy dirt road. Flags claim this as Zapatista territory and I’m surrounded by thousands of short guys in ski masks. But there are no AK47s in sight.

The rebels have just sung an out-of-tune version of the Mexican national anthem and a more melodic version of their own hymn. I’d kill for a cold beer but alcohol is banned in Zapatista land so I content myself with an instant noodle soup sold in Garrucha’s only store. I’m delving, doing my journo thing of digging up and robbing Patricio’s stories. I’m also enjoying his company. He’s fresh-faced 24 with a warm smile and pleasant manners, friendly but not invasive.

Patricio is a child of the 14-year old Zapatista rebellion, an uprising that helped bring down seven decades of one party rule in Mexico, revive indigenous rights in the Americas and inspire new revolutionary hopes in Europe. He was ten when a band of poor brown-skinned farmers brandished Kalashnikovs, put on ski masks and marched into the colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas declaring war on the Mexican government in the name of indigenous rights and democracy. When the Mexican army hit back, he fled his village with his family and hid in the jungle as military planes blitzed the area. They survived eating plants and small animals while the explosions rattled around them.

Patricio finally retuned home after a ceasefire was brokered with the help of a liberation-theology bishop. His Tzoztil-speaking village of 300 inhabitants then promptly declared itself an autonomous Zapatista community, or a community in rebellion. The Mexican government was not allowed into the village in any form and a “Good Government Council” ran all the services. La Garrucha was the hub Zapatista town that his pueblo communicated with, the meeting point for dozens of rebel villages.

Patricio never went to secondary school. With the rest of his community, he harvested corn and beans to eat and coffee to sell. Others in the village took the coffee to the market in the town of Ocosingo but he has never ventured that far. He has however learned to speak pretty good Spanish from the Zapatista network and we can chat fine. He got married a couple of years ago to a girl he met dancing at a Zapatista festival, he tells me. I got married a couple of years ago to a girl I met dancing in a bar in the center of Mexico City, I tell him.

Patricio considers himself in rebellion, at war with the Mexican government. Are there people at war with the government in England, he asks. I guess some are, I tell him. He has never watched television and the only radio he has heard is the Zapatista’s Radio Insurgente. I listen to it and find it quite entertaining. The DJ plays Mexican norteno and banda music followed by the odd punk song in Spanish. There are salutes to Zapata and Che Guevara. “I have a revolutionary feeling I want to share,” says a caller to the radio. “It is in the form of a poem to companero Che.”

Guevara was a great revolutionary, Patricio says. Zapata is the father, the man who first dared to declare “Land and Freedom.” What about Subcomandante Marcos, I ask him, referring to the pipe-smoking former college professor who is the Zapatista’s public face. Is Marcos your leader? Patricio pauses. Marcos is a good revolutionary. But he is a “sub – commander” not a supreme leader.

We start to play a game. I say names and he tells me what he thinks of them. George Bush? Never heard of him. Osama bin Laden? Never heard of him. Pope John Paul II? A great religious leader, almost a saint. Pancho Villa? Never heard of him. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador? Patricio’s face shows a vague recognition at the mention of Mexico’s most prominent leftist politician. Is this Lopez Obrador in favor or against the Zapatistas, he asks.

The game takes a rapid change as Patricio swiftly turns the tables on me. He says names of plants and animals from the Lacandon jungle and I say what I think. Jaguars? Fast cats, probably pretty scary if they are running toward you. Eyelash Vipers? Never heard of them. Firecracker plants? Never heard of them? Cuachalala trees? Roseate Spoonbills? Jesus Christ Lizards? I know nothing. Patricio chuckles. It dawns on me that my knowledge would earn me the status of village idiot where he lives.

I ask about the Mayan people, the great civilization he is descended from. My questions draw a blank. The word Mayan means nothing to him. He is Tzotzil. And he is Mexican. He knows some people who have gone to work in the United States, he says. A guy in Ocosingo will take them there for 20,000 pesos. But where would he get 20,000 pesos?

It’s late and cold. I’m going to sleep on the seat of my rented car. He is going to crash out on the earth with his friends. We nod each other an “hasta luego.” He asks me if I can send him a Kung Fu magazine. I say that would be difficult because not too many postmen arrive in this neck of the woods. But I promise that I’ll try.

Contact Ioan Grillo: ibgrillo@yahoo.com

Posted by Franc Contreras