From the mountains of the Mexican southeast

On Friday I headed out with a couple of my housemates and some other folks to one of the jungle canyons for the second in the series of meetings between the Zapatista leadership and different sectors of civil society. The first one the previous weekend was with left political organizations, and this one was with indigenous groups from some of the more than 50 native ethnicities in Mexico. Meetings with other sectors are scheduled for each of the next four weekends. Well, maybe "scheduled" is an overstatement, as the Zapatistas have been announcing the place and logistical details only a day or so before each one... For the first meeting they announced that the human rights center here in town would be in charge of giving directions, which my friends there say caught them completely by surprise, so they had to scramble to draw maps and field phone calls and figure out what to do with all the poems and love letters to Marcos that were emailed to them.

We went in two pick-up trucks, passing through the last real town a couple of hours out of San Cristóbal, then through tiny communities as we rumbled down the dirt road through the canyon. One of the little villages had a surprising amount of construction, including two-story cinderblock houses and pick-ups scattered about, and I found out from my housemates who have done a lot of work in this region that almost the entire town is dedicated to the "pollero" business, smuggling illegal immigrants (mostly from Central America) northward toward the U.S. Of course they're a pro-government village and presumably someone there has taken care of greasing the right palms or delivering votes to the right box to protect the lucrative trade. I had heard from another friend that the Zapatistas recently caught one of the smugglers trying to cross through their territory, and they detained the guy for a few days, made him return the money to the hapless "pollos," and gave the travelers food and shelter until they could move on. But the economic migrant stream is just one symptom of the larger structural problems that the Zapatistas are battling.

Finally we got to a turn in the road where there was a huge banner proclaiming simply, "Here it is." A couple of guys guarding the banner approached and asked where we were going. My housemate who was driving was a little nonplussed, as there weren't too many places to be going, so he hesitated a minute and then replied, "Well, here!" - at which our greeters and everyone in the truck broke into gales of laughter. We were directed to a spot to park near the church and told we could walk to the next hillside to register, then go bathe in the river or string our hammocks or whatever. It turns out most of the people would arrive later that evening or early the next morning when the meetings would start. At the next hillside, two people from the editorial collective of the pro-Zapatista magazine Rebeldía were taking down names and organizations on a laptop and issuing little color-coded stickies for delegates, observers, and press.

There were little booths covered with plastic or tin sheets where local Tzeltal villagers were dispatching steaming coffee and delicious potato tamales and corn on the cob from the first of their harvest to the weary travelers. We walked around a little and checked out the conference facilities, a long series of poles holding up tin sheets and tarps with rows of rough-hewn planks set up on cross-sections of tree stumps for benches.

We set up camp for the night, shared food, and walked around schmoozing with arriving delegates - people from some of the 50+ indigenous nations who make up about 10-12% of Mexico's population, plus observers from Mexican NGOs and veterans of peasant and indigenous social struggles, some internationalists working in various projects in Zapatista communities (some of whom I had already run into in my brief visits to two of the Caracoles), and a scattering of alternative media folks plus two reporters from La Jornada. The atmosphere of expectation and the diversity evident in the variety of dress, from the bright beads of the Huicholes to the stencilled black t-shirts of the Chicanos, reminded me of the 2001 Zapatista caravan, a kind of whistlestop tour across the country that included a stop at the 3rd convention of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI).

Eventually weariness overcame excitement and we crashed, sung to sleep by a chorus of frogs. I slept in the back of the pickup, which leaked a bit in the evening rainstorm. Morning brought waves of fog through the canyon, and cooking fires to heat watery coffee mixed with corn.
People started drifting into the assembly area, greeting friends they hadn't been able to see in the previous night's dark. I met a Brazilian political scientist who has been doing research on responses to NAFTA in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, one of the few other academics there. I got to talking with a sixtyish fellow who it turns out was one of the founders of INIES, the sister institute to the place I worked in Nicaragua in the '80s. We knew a lot of people in common and got lost in our memories of an earlier revolutionary moment, and now here we were chasing the hope that had slipped away.




As we sat chatting and waiting, a ski-masked Zapatista insurgent casually appeared from the back of the makeshift cafe, unnoticed by most. A few minutes later there was a buzz, as other members of the Zapatista leadership filed by to take their places at a table in the front.







The crowd broke into applause and the journalists jockeyed for photo angles. Then Marcos with his trademark pipe and other members of the General Command of the EZLN walked over the hilltop in back with an armed escort, joining the rest of the ski-masked group in coffee-colored shirts and dark pants.

Comandante Kelly, one of the female leaders, made some welcoming remarks to the more than 60 groups that had sent representatives. Then Marcos took the microphone to make a longer speech, paying respects to

the indigenous groups that had lost people in the struggle, and briefly recounting the story of this autonomous community that had been "recovered" from a tyrannical landowner who used to make the peasants clear land for him, then he would come back a few weeks later when new underbrush was growing and refuse to pay them on the grounds that they hadn't cleared it well. Marcos made a few ironic remarks about the political elite, and he also made a point of emphasizing the Zapatistas' commitment to gender equality, which seemed particularly significant at this gathering because some critics have charged that the movement's defense of indigenous traditions of self-governance could come at the expense of women's rights. He urged the attendees to speak their minds and promised that the Zapatistas would not only listen, but would accept invitations to go visit any of the groups for further conversations. Then there was a brief recess while the woman from Rebeldía jotted down the speakers' list.

The speakers were indigenous men and women, young and old, from all over Mexico. Most began with a few words of greeting in their native language, then told something of their particular struggles, then in a few cases offered some broader analysis or proposals or critical comments about the EZLN or the "Other Campaign" being inaugurated with these meetings. One militant group from Oaxaca that has suffered heavy government repression criticized the Zapatistas for paying more attention to famous groups than to lesser known struggles, focusing more on international relations than on the forgotten backwaters, and for not making public pronouncements of support for other struggles of unknown groups in remote places. Another veteran organization took the opportunity to remind the gathering that they had been organizing indigenous people long before the Zapatistas. One group pointed out that they lacked opportunities to speak directly to the Zapatistas, without intermediaries. Several speakers choked up as they remembered the casualties of their struggles. Many of the groups and speakers were clearly new at this, struggling to find the words to describe their movements and activities. Others were much more analytical, pointing out the devastating impact of a recent spate of privatizing legislation (laws on water, mining, biodiversity, etc.). Many criticized the government's agrarian counter-reform, noting that dividing up communal land among individuals was an attack on indigenous culture and rights. Some stressed spiritual connections to Mother Earth, while others focused on questions of political organizing such as the relatively disappointing efforts of the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) to forge a common indigenous front over the last few years. Several women talked about their double oppression as women and indigenous people, and one group distributed educational posters about violence against women.

There was a wide diversity of styles and content, and many of the speakers went on at considerable length. With more than 30 groups signed up to speak, it was became clear that time was going to be an issue, and the woman from Rebeldía suggested that speakers try to be brief. At that point Marcos took back the microphone and said no, everyone should feel free to give their word, however long it took, since they were there to listen. He reminded the group that at the previous encounters, he had even defended the right of people to speak in defense of López Obrador without time limit. The crowd of about 250 seemed to appreciate this, and indeed the meeting turned into a marathon of about 12 hours (with a lunch break). As far as I could tell, nobody left except for a few journalists who dashed off to file stories at the first break.

At one point there was a pause because the roar of a rainstorm drowned out even the amplified speaker system. As everyone waited patiently, someone started to sing the old Mexican popular song "Cielito Lindo," and the whole crowd joined in, after which they sang the Zapatista anthem. Then back to work as the rain receded to a dull drumming.

When the last speaker was through long after dark, Marcos announced that there would be a brief recess, after which he would make a few remarks of summation, and then the comandantes would be available for private meetings with any of the indigenous groups that wanted to talk to them. This second phase of the meeting would go on as long as necessary.

The summation was truly impressive. Marcos and the other leaders, who had sat quietly through 12 hours of speeches by grassroots activists, showed that in fact they had been taking detailed notes and listening carefully. He made a brief but specific comment in response to each and every group, particularly thanking the groups that were most critical for speaking their minds. He noted that they would in fact now be meeting with the groups "without intermediaries," recognizing the legitimacy of that request. And he acknowledged the validity of the criticism that they had perhaps paid more attention to famous groups and international audiences than more obscure local struggles; but he said they would redouble their efforts to reach out to the latter, without abandoning their wider outreach or becoming "anti-intellectual." He reiterated the Zapatistas' rejection of the political elite and electoral politics, noting that they have not repressed or mistreated any groups that are still engaged in those forms of activity, but that all they asked for was honesty.

Finally the plenary session broke up. People fumbled around in the dark, looking for the latrines or their sleeping places or a bit of corn on the cob, or hustling for a ride back to town the next morning.

The meeting certainly was not a model of efficiency, but that of course was not the point. Ordinary people engaged in meaningful struggles had traveled long distances to come together, to be with each other and to see how they could work in parallel with the Zapatistas. Every group had extended a cordial invitation to the Zapatistas to come visit them when this series of meetings ends and the traveling phase of the "Other Campaign" begins, and the Zapatistas promised to take them up on it. There was a spirit of genuine dialogue that is sorely missing in most of what passes for politics. The gathering might have been spotty in terms of strict representation, but it certainly was participatory. My housemates and I talked about it afterwards, remarking on the wide variety of levels of political analysis and sophistication among the groups present. Indigenous groups in Mexico have not had the kind of national organizational structures that, say, U.S. Native Americans developed over the last few decades (not that those have been without their problems, including COINTELPRO infiltration and divisions), and in fact the Mexican National Indigenous Congress (CNI) only emerged in recent years since the Zapatista uprising. So one could look at the glass as half empty in light of the relatively limited organizational development, or one could see it as half full in that so many truly grassroots activists made such sacrifices to come together to build more coherence in the movement. And the Zapatistas, who have been exhorting civil society to get organized and take power (which they themselves note that they have no interest in), have finally decided to develop an alliance strategy.

I have the feeling that this really is an open-ended process, that much will depend on what comes out of meetings like this one, as well as the follow-up when Zapatista delegates travel out of Chiapas to other parts of Mexico. The autonomy process has made significant advances with regional structures of self-governance in parts of Chiapas,
but there is only so far that such a movement can go when it is hemmed in by state policies, by increasing erosion of legal and constitutional rights, and by the forces of transnational capital. So now the Zapatistas will try to preserve and continue to build on their base of autonomous government which remains a promising model, while launching an ambitious campaign of political outreach that will compete for attention with what promises to be a noisy and nasty electoral campaign year.