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Zapatistas Activate a New Kind of Bomb in the Mexican Southeast
(Al Giordano, Narco News, August 23, 2005)
. . . representatives of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation . . . They've been listening, now, for various hours to presentations by representatives of social organizations that have traveled from all parts of this Mexico to tell of their struggles, offer proposals, and speak their word. . . . A spokesman from a neighborhood association from Tlalpan in Mexico City told the Zapatistas and the other 500 or so folks here that his group, too, wants to govern its area autonomously from impositions by the powers from above. His neighbors and he admire how the Zapatistas have formed their own democratic governments from below, without asking permission from the State. "Autonomy isn’t a demand only by the indigenous," the young man said, "but also in urban areas." Next came a woman from the Intersindical Primero de Mayo: women workers. They - as others throughout the day and night would do - proposed a meeting "just for women" as part of this Zapatista information-gathering process. There was strong applause each time this idea was raised. . . . Abigail Morita, 23, a mural painter from the nation's capital explained to Narco News: "We young people don’t identify with these Old Left groups. If we are not at their service, they don't look for us. They aren't interested in us. We are just cannon fodder for them. It enrages me. Many of these organizations don't do anything. The Zapatistas and the indigenous movement are different. The Zapatistas speak our language." . . . Morita refers to herself and to her peers as the "post-99 generation" that came out of, or after, the strike that closed the National University for 10 months and polarized the political left, for and against. And yet, as the day marched on, the many young people present - some who came as "observers" rather than as delegates of organizations - leaned closer in from their benches. They listened more and more closely to the words being spoken by many middle-aged and elder delegates from unions, neighborhood organizations, and others like them, and found much in common. For these "older" groups were not primarily from the ancient left, but, most (not all, but most), in fact, are younger as organizations than the student strike committee of '99. By the end of the weekend, a kind of ice had been melted under the Chiapaneco sun. People from different generations - indeed, different universes, it seems - had found paths to understand each other and reason to fight together. . . . Most of the organizations present were formed in the past five years by sectors of Mexican society that have been ravaged by the privatization of government tasks as imposed by the rules of the market. Their demands have been ignored and their people made into outcasts by political parties and institutional organizations and leaders, including those of the Old Left that, according to some of younger folks like Morita, they sounded like. They are at the margins. And it is through the margins and the marginalized - who together in this country and this world make for a majority of minorities - that the Zapatistas have begun to arm a kind of bomb and a corresponding explosion to come. The bomb under construction is, among other qualities, inter-generational. That is one difficult bomb to arm. But - lookey here - it is yet a more difficult one for the powerful to deactivate once it begins ticking. . . . [NOTE: Click the link above for much more in-depth analysis of the various factions now coming together in Mexico.] . . . And yet these testimonies here provide only a glimpse into the breadth and depth of this national movement – last week it was 92 indigenous organizations at the microphone, the week before it was 48 political organizations of the left, next weekend more than 300 non-governmental, artistic, and cultural organizations will send delegates – being activated: a social tsunami gathering force, far off the shores of election campaigns and mass media simulation. . . . And those who look only to the powers from above - to the Commercial Media, to the owning-class, to its politicians and parties - will be the last to see that great wave rolling over what they mistakenly thought to be real, static and permanent. But here it comes, from an ocean of humanity that is today on a mountaintop in the Mexican Southeast, striking out toward… well… kind reader… moving toward… the unwanted and seemingly invincible impositions all around you, too.

posted by LoZo 12:34 PM