From the mountains of the Mexican southeast

OK webheads, sorry to tell you, I may be off the air for awhile as my housemates have to take down their internet connection tonight to loan out the equipment for other use. I might be able to use a computer at the Indymedia office, but don't panic if you don't hear from me for a bit.

Conversation at the breakfast table today was mostly about Marcos' speeches at last weekend's civil society "encounter" with left political organizations, and an exchange of letters he had in La Jornada with staunch defenders of López Obrador and the PRD. The letters lay out the case against the PRD pretty clearly, with fewer rhetorical flourishes than the speeches: The party torpedoed the indigenous rights law that they had promised to support and instead signed onto the 2001 counterreform, and local PRD supporters carried out violent attacks against unarmed Zapatista supporters in Chiapas on several occasions. As an aside, Marcos notes that López Obrador (AMLO, or "the unnameable" as Marcos has taken to calling him) promised an investor-friendly government in interviews with the New York Times and Financial Times, and claims to be against privatization but supports "co-investment" (i.e. gradual privatization), sort of like Bush's position on Social Security. AMLO has also surrounded himself with right-wing advisors and appointees, including many from the formerly ruling PRI. Marcos recognizes in the letters that a lot of worthy veterans of past social struggles are pinning their hopes on López Obrador, and he notes that they're not excluded from participating in what the Zapatistas are calling "The Other Campaign" (i.e. non-electoral) that they've launched with the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle; but he's quite clear that the Zapatistas have no use for the 3 major parties of Mexico's political class.

My housemates commented that 1) folks in the jungle and other grassroots supporters of various social movements and independent organizations have little interest in the PRD or electoral politics that the mainstream media and intellectuals are so focused on, 2) Marcos is right in what he says about the PRD, but 3) it's time for him to stop talking about the PRD already, or he's going to fall into the trap of an endless debate that is irrelevant to most of the Zapatista base.

I'm still thinking about trying to go to the next in the series of encounters this coming weekend, which is designated for indigenous groups and could be even more interesting. The Zapatistas have been less than clear about whether observers are welcome, and I'd hate to shlep all the way out there to be turned back, so we'll see.

We're going to be getting a new housemate, a young woman from Querétaro who is studying anthropology at one of the local universities. My current housemates are happy because as a student she'll presumably be staying put in town, so there will be someone to feed the dogs

and watch the house since they travel a lot for their work. Meanwhile one of the other guys in the house is off to Mexico City and Ireland for a few weeks, and I'm only here until the 3rd of September when I move into a nice house in El Cerrillo neighborhood which will be vacated then. Don't worry, I'm working on trying to get an internet connection there, which like everything else is a slow and complicated process. Phone lines are scarce because there's limited capacity and a waiting list of months or years in most neighborhoods, and existing lines (phone numbers) are actually owned by individuals who can take the line with them when they move, or sell the number to someone else. Anyway, there's a phone in the house, but it currently has limited service that's not internet-compatible, and the line is technically owned by a long-gone owner who didn't do all the paperwork of formally transferring the line when he informally sold it to the current owner of the house (Sherry from Los Angeles, who rents out the house on condition that she can use the upstairs bedroom when she's down here on vacation for a week or two each year). So Bela, a gringa who just got dual Mexican nationality and has lived here for years and manages the rentals for Sherry, is putting her talents to work with Telmex to change the type of phone line and install internet service. It's not clear whether that will involve a little forgery or bribery or simply patience to out-wait the Telmex bureaucrats, but I have confidence in Bela to make it happen.