WISHING THE ZAPATISTA REVOLUTION

MEMORIES FROM IN THE TIME OF THE REAL PEOPLE

May The Zapatista Revolution Become the Revolution of Mankind
by Jeff Knaebel

(Now, many years later as I write this, I am thinking, “If I had known of Subcomandante Marcos in those days, I would have volunteered to start a Zapatista “air force.” Might have given him the laugh for that day.)

In the early nineties while I was engaged in volunteer flying for the Tarahumara, Huichol, Eskimo and Gwich’in, Marcos was nurturing the seeds of his revolution in deep secrecy. I also did some flying for the International Indian Treaty Council, but I was then way too naïve politically to know the significance of the upending of 500 years of history that was about to take place in “celebration” of Columbus’s arrival. I played an unwitting role.

That night we slept on table tops in the one room school-community hall of the village, having purchased and eaten what appeared to be the last tin of sardines in their little canteen store.

I was here because of the Tarahumara healer, Jorge Marquez, M.D., whom I was later to escort to an IITC gathering of indigenous peoples from around the world at Arctic Village, Alaska. Jorge had spoken of losing his daughter at a government hospital. To the callous bureaucrat staff, he was “just an Indian.” His daughter had died of government negligence.