Zapatistas, Compañeros

All royalties from the sale of The Speed of Dreams go to autonomous media projects in Chiapas.

by Canek Peña-Vargas and Greg Ruggiero

The following text is taken from the editors’s note to:

The Speed of Dreams

Collected Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, 2001–2007

Edited by Canek Peña-Vargas and Greg Ruggiero
Published by City Lights Books | www.citylights.com

ISBN-13 978-0-87286-478-8

In Chiapas, these are complicated times, in an even more complicated place. The desire for knowledge refuses simple answers and instead offers itself in the form of new questions. To a visiting traveler, valuable insights drift elusively through the air. In moments like these, expect to be disoriented, because this is a place where disparate worlds meet, mingle, or collide. A sign on the main road offers an explanation of what to expect:

municipio autonomo rebelde zapatista – junta de buen gobierno – corazón céntrico de los zapatistas delante del mundo¹

This is Oventik, a zapatista caracol, a spiral-shaped path where travelers from around the world arrive, share questions, learn, and then return home. The zapatistas are here, standing before the world with their hearts in their hands—an invitation to solidarity. And here she is, a young and enthusiastic medical student, whose determined path takes her from Chile to Cuba, and now to Chiapas. She has come to embrace the heart of zapatismo and thinks she will find it at the center of this caracol, perhaps wearing a mask, perhaps smoking a pipe. Her time here is short, so she asks her questions quickly. “Have you read Marcos’s latest communiqué? What did you think? Will he really ride his motorcycle through all thirty-one states of Mexico?”

Her questions receive a few brief, though friendly, responses, and then silence. The aspiring doctor struggles to slow her enthusiastic pace to the jungle’s patient rhythm: the fog’s wandering crawl, the sun’s steady arc across the sky. Silence—followed by another question, which strikes to the source of her fascination. “Have any of you actually met Marcos?”

“Of course, we are all Marcos.”

Another compañera had looked up and spoken. Her response turned a small crowd of heads; and now the group was looking at her and she was looking back at them. And there was an understanding. All of them, including the well-intentioned medical student, giggled at the absurdity of looking for the heart of a movement behind the mask of a single man.

When she addressed the Mexican National Congress in 2001, Comandanta Esther found it necessary to correct similar misunderstandings:

Some might have thought that this tribune would be occupied by Sup Marcos, and that it would be he who would be giving this main message of the zapatistas.

You can now see that it is not so.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos is that, a Subcomandante.

We are the Comandantes, those who command jointly, the ones who govern our peoples, obeying.

We gave the Sup and those who share hopes and dreams with him, the mission of bringing us to this tribune...

Now it is our hour… And so it is I, an indigenous woman.

There are many echoes of Comandanta Esther’s lesson in this collection. The words that fill these pages reach beyond the signature of that renowned writer and insurgent, Subcomandante Marcos. Many of these words are signed by members of the zapatista guerrilla leadership, the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command (CCRI-CG) of the EZLN: Comandates David, Eduardo, Tacho, Gustavo, Zevedo, Sergio, Susana, Omar, Javier, Filemón, Yolanda, Abraham, Isaías, Daniel, Bulmaro, Mister, Abel, Fidelia, Moisés, Alejandro, Esther, Maxo, and Ismael.²

In Chiapas, the indigenous command of the EZLN and representatives of the Good Government Juntas have revived a form of leadership, mandar obedeciendo, which means to command by obeying. This model of accountability is reflected in the process and product of zapatista writing as well. Communiqués or speeches might be signed by an individual, but they represent the voices of many.

“Through my voice speaks the voice of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation” are words one encounters often in zapatista speeches and writings. Despite the single signature at the bottom of each communiqué, zapatista texts have more than several authors. They have thousands, primarily indigenous, many of whom are illiterate, but all of whom contribute their work, their sweat, their leadership, their thoughts, and (all too often) their blood to the authorship of their own history.

The composition of zapatista communiqués is a collective process that includes as much action as writing. The words cannot be separated from the activity that animates them. Of course, indigenous zapatistas do not simply contribute sweat and blood to the movement. Their intellectual contributions travel through an intricate network of community councils, striving toward consensus through popular participation. This process is always present but not always overtly expressed in the now-classic sign-off: “From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.”

• • •

As editors and activists in solidarity with the zapatistas, publishing THE SPEED OF DREAMS presented several challenges. How to make a selection of the most poetic and philosophical texts from the vast trove of material produced by the EZLN? Which pieces will best communicate with English-speaking readers the questions, stories, and vision of the zapatistas’ insurgent community? Limitations of time and space obliged us to limit our selection to pieces that had already been translated into English, and to those that were made public from 2001 to the present, the period of time following the publication of Our Word Is Our Weapon, to which The Speed of Dreams is a sister edition.

Originally written or spoken in Spanish and distributed by the zapatistas during public gatherings, through their Web sites, and through the Mexican daily paper La Jornada, most of the zapatista texts are translated into English by cultural workers and activists who translate as an act of movement solidarity and resistance. We are particularly grateful to the many years of translating rendered by irlandesa. Many, if not most, of the writings in The Speed of Dreams are based upon her translations.

The EZLN are prolific, and volumes of their public speeches, musical recordings, stories, and communiqués have been posted online as video and audio files, speech transcripts, and translated texts during the period this book covers, 2001 to the present. Along with the more allegorical, philosophical, and poetic texts, we also included some shorter examples of historical or logistical communiqués in order to reflect the poetics of praxis. Lacking the metaphors, imagery, and playful dialogue characteristic of the more “literary” pieces, these communiqués speak to the daily processes of building power, democracy, and sustainability within the autonomous communities. In a moment of self-consciousness, Subcomandante Marcos comments jokingly on his own dry tone: “I know that some of you will be thinking that this is starting to look like a government report, and the only thing missing is my saying ‘the number of poor have been reduced’ or some other ‘Fox-ism.’”³ Nevertheless, at times these logistical reports or linear histories inspire the imagination—the dream that another world is possible—in ways that metaphors and allegories cannot.

The Speed of Dreams begins with the March of the Color of the Earth, the EZLN’s political march from Chiapas to Mexico City in 2001, and continues through to the Sixth Declaration in 2005 and its manifestation as a nationwide grassroots organizing effort, the Other Campaign, in 2006. Along the way, readers will notice a period of silence between 2001 and 2003. During this time, the zapatistas released few public statements. Instead, they focused on the task of building local networks of autonomy, communication, sustainability, and self-governance.

Readers may encounter new or unfamiliar terms, many of which we briefly explain with footnotes. However, we intentionally did not attempt to translate certain Spanish and indigenous words for which we could not agree on an adequate English translation. In the majority of these cases, we marked non-English words with italics. However, in several cases we chose not to italicize particular words as a way of introducing them to English. These immigrant words—as of yet undocumented by Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionary—have no single-word English equivalent. In Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, historian John Womack illustrates the need to expand English vocabulary with the example of the word “campesino”:

The word “peasant” does not normally appear here. I have preferred other words on purpose... I do not deny that there were and still are peasants in Mexico, but only affirm that by 1910 most families outside the cities there probably were not peasant; certainly most families in Morelos were not. What they were is clear in Spanish: “campesinos,” people of the fields.⁴

There are many words in The Speed of Dreams that are similar to “campesino” in that they resist translation. One example is the word “compañero” and its abbreviated form, “compa.” The word means “comrade,” “partner,” “close friend,” but no one of these can stand in for “compa” or “compañero.” Rather than assimilate by translation or issue a temporary visa via italics, we chose instead to invite compañeros directly into English.

Another example is the word “ejido,” communal land shared by the people of a community. There is no single-word translation for “ejido” and its variants: “ejidal,” “ejiditario,” etc. Considering Merriam-Webster has already included a definition for “hacienda,” we found it important to introduce this alternative model of land use, one that references the historic struggle for Mexican land reform. Ejidos are one example of such an alternative, which prioritizes subsistence and collectivity as opposed to profit and hierarchy, and so we adopt rather than translate “ejido” as well.

In keeping with the EZLN’s own use of the term, “zapatista” remains uncapitalized, except in instances where it appears as part of a proper name such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Special thanks go to many compas for their inspiration, support, feedback, and friendship throughout the editing process: Thank you Ren-Yo, Jacob, Maka, Karlita, El Pinche Simon, RJ, Juan, Miguelito, and Lydia. Thank you Roger Stoll for your dedication to the task of transcribing and translating zapatista music, making these songs accessible to the world. Thank you to organizations such as Estacion Libre, Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Regeneración Childcare Collective, Pachamama, Pacifica Radio, and many others, whose actions lend flight to the words in this book, proving that international solidarity means global consciousness and local groundedness. Un abrazo fuerte to Laura Carlsen for her excellent introductory essay, and to Alejandro Reyes for his invaluable eleventh-hour help with translation. Finally, thank you Elaine, Stacey, Chante, Bob, and everyone at City Lights Books for supporting this project and making it a reality.

The texts in this book whisper and conspire. They do not simply recount historical events but inspire reflection, analysis, deeper connections, and direct action. They were spoken and written as acts of resistance and embody what the zaptistas call caminar preguntando, to walk questioning. The Speed of Dreams is thus an invitation to retrace and join the zapatista path of listening, connecting, questioning, resisting, dreaming—not just as isolated readers, but as compañeros in a global movement.

NOTES

1. ZAPATISTA AUTONOMOUS REBEL MUNICIPALITY—GOOD GOVERNMENT JUNTA—CENTRAL HEART OF THE ZAPATISTAS BEFORE THE WORLD

2. On December 2, 2000, it was announced that these twenty-three members of the CCRI-CG EZLN, together with Subcomandante Marcos, would comprise the zapatista delegation to Mexico City, the March of the Color of the Earth.

3. “Foxism” refers to the former Mexican president Vicente Fox Queseda. This communiqué excerpt is taken from Chiapas: The Thirteenth Stele, Part Five: A History.

4. Womack, John. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1970.

All royalties from the sale of The Speed of Dreams go to autonomous media projects in Chiapas.

In 2008, City Lights Books will publish The Fire and the Word, A History of the Zapatista Movement by Gloria Muñoz Ramirez. Gloria will be making a major U.S. tour. For details and updates, check City Lights Web page, www.citylights.com