From the mountains of the Mexican southeast

It's been a fun stretch in town with lots of visitors all of a sudden. On Vicki's last day we had a latke party, a belated Chanukah celebration and farewell to Vicki and welcome to Elizabeth, who came in from San Diego just in time for the party. Latkes are potato pancakes made with grated onion, traditional Jewish food for Chanukah, and since Jews love to debate, there is of course the Great Latke Controversy: to top them with sour cream or apple sauce?? Vicki thoughtfully imported both for the occasion, and our Mexican guests came up with a Solomonic third choice to resolve the topping debate: salsa picante, ¡of course! A good time was had by all, and Vicki continued northward to Mexico City where she met with members of the collective of trainers for the Zapatista teacher school in the jungle, for what I understand was a marathon of math games and good conversation.

Elizabeth, who is originally from the northern border region of Mexico and now works and studies (Masters in Latin American Studies) in San Diego, comes here frequently for projects through her solidarity committees in San Diego and Ensenada, Baja California. She was joined a few days later by Coni who teaches at the University of Baja California and works with the Ensenada solidarity collective. They took turns going out to the jungle region for meetings with the Junta of Good Government about health projects that their committees support, and in between time they slaved over the laptop in the kitchen revising the proposal to reflect the preferences and comments of the Junta and Zapatista health commission so they can get it into shape to seek foundation funding. One day when they were both in town we all went with their friend Mariza, who teaches sociology at the Autonomous University of Chiapas, to the Zapatista Caracol at Oventic in the highlands. Elizabeth and Coni bought artisanry from the women's cooperative there to sell back home at fundraisers for the health project, and Mariza wanted to visit some compas she had been working with on a mushroom-growing project.

It was wonderful having such warm and interesting visitors, but now they're all gone and it's time for me to get back to work. I get up early Thursday Jan. 19 and catch the combi toward the town at the edge of the jungle, which I'll calll Macondo (with apologies to García Márquez). Traveling is more than just getting there, it's always enlightening. It's a good thing I got an early start, because traffic is halted for about a half hour just outside San Cristóbal. It's a military checkpoint, a slight ratcheting up of the tension levels. They seem to be just peering into vehicles and giving people the evil eye, but it's enough to back up traffic.

I arrive in Macondo in time to buy a sweetroll and get a seat on the bus. My seatmate is a fiftyish man who asks where I'm going. There aren't many plausible tourist stops on this route and he'll find out in a few hours anyway, so I tell him. Amused, he asks, "Oh, have you met Subcomandante Marcos?" I laugh and reply that Marcos is on national tour now. We have the obligatory conversation about how far it is to the U.S. and about crops, and he tells me he belongs to the non-Zapatista peasant organization ARIC. He says they struggled for years to try to buy land from the wealthy finquero (or "pinquero" as he called him, since there is no "f" sound in the Tzeltal language), but then the landowners fled the 1994 uprising and the Zapatistas took over the land, which he claimed left his group with nothing. I know from reading the "log" on the wall in the Vigilance Commission, where Junta business is laid out for all to see, that in fact the Zapatistas have been adjudicting such disputes and sometimes distributing some of their "recovered" land to non-Zapatistas.

A younger man across the aisle asks where I'm going, followed by sharp questioning about who I know there, how many times I've been, what's my name, where do I live, etc. I give vague answers. Then he tells me he has just been in San Cristóbal bringing his compañera to the hospital, where she stayed for 12 days for complications from her pregnancy. She looks wiped out, and he brings her a cold Coke which she presses against her forehead like a compress. From the way they are dressed, I would guess he is going to spend a good part of the year working to pay for the 12-day stay in San Cristóbal.

Two stinking-drunk men stagger onto the bus. As the bus lurches around the mountain curves, one of the drunks keeps trying unsuccessfully to stand up. He clutches at everyone who comes within reach and tries to speak to them. For the most part, adults and children alike treat him tolerantly. They he starts to hassle a middle-aged woman with a Zapatista paliacate (kerchief) around her neck and she snaps, "If you want to drink, drink, but I don't want you talking to me!" Her words and tone momentarily startle him into submission, the shock perhaps magnified by the fact that she addressed him in Spanish--the language of harshness and authority? Later, when he started to get obnoxious again and shout for a stop, yelling "Xux!" (Tzeltal for piss), the driver read him the riot act: "If you keep pestering, I'll put you off at the Caracol--we have an agreement with the authorities!"--meaning the Zapatista autonomous authorities, who enforce a strict ban on alcohol in their territory. The thought of a night in the pokey seemed to sober him up. The driver softened a bit, admonishing him, "If you want to drink, drink decently." He then stopped for a bathroom break, announcing merrily, "O.K., all the pissers, hurry up!"

The driver is a huge man with a moustache who likes to wave his arms around (instead of keeping them on the wheel) as he talks to his assistants. He's also a bit of a drinker himself, as I know from riding his bus around New Year's. I think he's mestizo and doesn't speak much Tzeltal, but he seems like an old hand on this bus route, and I've heard him ferociously dressing down assistants who didn't properly attend to bus maintenance tasks. It occurs to me that it must take some shrewdness to negotiate the complicated social and political dynamics of the clientele and competing authorities on this bus route. Then there are the logistics of keeping this rattletrap going over rough and remote terrain, plus the return trip which is an overnight run on the unlighted dirt road. We are stopped by a road crew that is laying gravel and says there's only room for traffic in one direction for the next few kilometers. After a short argument about how far the truck down the hill has advanced, the driver guns the engine and roars ahead anyway. He miscalculates and we meet the truck, but he can't back down and lose face now, so he swerves up over the edge of the road into the brush and somehow we get by without overturning.

On the three hour ride from Macondo we encounter 10 military vehicles coming out of the canyons, including one Humvee gassing up where we stopped for gas at the outskirts of town (with a soldier guarding the operation from the road with rifle at the ready), three light trucks and six troop transport trucks. Too soon to tell if military activity is cranking up again, but this seems like more movement than usual and worth keeping an eye on.

Arriving at the Caracol, the compañeros de la Vigilancia are busy at a meeting with the Information Commission, so I sit on a plank to wait and absorb the delicious sunshine and doze. After about a half hour they ask my name and reason for the visit and escort me to see the Junta, four men from the new shift. I explain that the previous shift authorized me to start working in a new municipality (county), and they invite me to spend the night in the camp while I wait for the municipal authorities, who are expected to assemble around 10:00 or 11:00 the next morning.

Friday morning I have breakfast with a French couple from Brettony who are on a two-year trek from Alaska to Chile, working on a book and film project about indigenous groups in the hemisphere. They are somewhat disappointed that in their brief stop in Chiapas they have not been able to interview Zapatista leaders about the political innovation represented by this movement. Of course most of the political leadership is currently out of the state on the "Other Campaign" tour, and the authorities in the autonomous regions are more focused on the daily affairs of governance in their territories. They ask me about how I got permission for my research, and they are startled to learn that it took three months of drafting proposals and consulting with the Juntas.

In talking with the Bretons it occurs to me that it's not so much that the Zapatista communities are closed, it's more that they have set up a structure in which they take charge of defining their own priorities, and the priorities they have defined are inwardly oriented rather than designed for the convenience of outsiders. In many ways the process is actually quite open: Anyone (regardless of political affiliation or "importance") can show up unannounced and get an audience with the Junta, the highest authorities in these lands, and directly discuss whatever proposal they have in mind. This contrasts with my recent experience trying to see the person in charge of the prosecutor's division of the state office of the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform--a month of unreturned phone calls and canceled appointments and I still haven't gotten in the door at this low-level branch of what the Zapatitas call the "bad government" (mal gobierno, or chopol ajwalil in Tzeltal). The Zapatista authorities hear everyone out and consult with all interested parties, a process which often takes time and requires patience as well as respect for the indigenous communities' rights to manage their own relations with outsiders. All consultations, budgets and decisions are written up and posted on the wall in the Caracol for all to see, a model of transparency in government.

I try to remember my own counsel of patience as I sit on a log in the shade outside the small cinderblock building that houses the autonomous municipal council. About twenty campesinos who have come in from communities around the county are also waiting, sitting on rocks and stumps or squatting or standing around the clearing, carrying small backpacks and morrales (woven shoulder bags) with pozol (corn gruel) to sustain them on their journey, waiting patiently for resolution of their local issues. Drifting through the open door of the council building we can hear the rising and falling voices of those presenting their issues, and the slow tap-tap of a manual typewriter. A few of the waiting clusters of people talk quietly among themselves, a pig wanders through the clearing, and in the background are the community sounds of chopping firewood, a crying baby, and metallic clanging from the bicycle repair workshop. A group of young foreigners are taking measurements on a half-completed building, apparently an ongoing solidarity project.

While waiting I think about the conversations I've had about the Other Campaign with three women from a solidarity collective that runs the café, one Basque and two from big-city Mexico. They are cautiously hopeful about the tour, while recognizing that the outcome will depend not just on the Zapatistas but on the response from Mexican civil society and the fragmented groups that make up the mosaic of the left. The latest polls for the July presidential election show "center left" PRD candidate López Obrador still 12 points ahead of PAN candidate Calderón, with the PRI's Madrazo in third place. But anything can happen in the next six months, and there is also a big dose of public apathy and cynicism about the antics of the political class. Meanwhile Marcos on tour says what candidates won't say in polite company--that First Lady Marta Sahagún should be held criminally liable for the influence-trading schemes that have enriched her ne'er-do-well sons; that the government was quick to repair luxury hotels damaged by hurricane Wilma in Cancún while the poor victims of hurricane Stan remain homeless in coastal Chiapas; and other plain-spoken truths that appeal to the ordinary people who turn out for the Other Campaign stops. According to the local human rights center, the government has been harassing those who participate in or publicize the Other Campaign, and infiltrating all the public events with agents and photographers.

There's still some apparent ambivalence on the tour, between emphasizing the events open to the general public--like the one in Yucatán where a drunk climbed up onto the stage to challenge Marcos--and the smaller meetings with activist groups that get far less press coverage, but might be more useful for building a national movement. The Zapatistas have opened a space for discussion among all those who consider themselves "anti-capitalist" or "on the left," but they resolutely refuse to predefine the nature or strategy of the movement which they hope will emerge from below. Their anti-vanguardist orientation is baffling to the old left, galvanizing for the new left, and a political gamble aimed at long-term fundamental change.

Meanwhile back at the municipal council, my turn finally comes around 5:00 p.m. after 7 hours of waiting. I try my best to explain my project to the council, but the concept of research is an alien one and I'm not sure it has come across clearly. In any event, they have more cases to attend this evening and ask me to come back the next morning at 9:00 for a reply. I'm still hoping I might make a quick trip out to one community over the weekend and get back in time to attend a colloquium at the institute Monday at noon, but the logistics are always unpredictable in the jungle.

The council receives me Saturday morning. After a few more explanations of the kinds of themes I'm interested in, they summon the county coordinators of education and health, both young men in their twenties, who give me an overview of their work in the municipality. Then the council draws up a list of a half dozen communities that would be interesting to visit, and we discuss logistics. They suggest I accompany them when they go off their shift at 2:00 p.m., as some are going by the first community on my list, and then I can figure out with the Zapatistas in each community how to get to the next one. The times and distances involved are not clear to me, but it seems worth missing the colloquium back in town to plunge ahead with the next phase of my field work while I'm out here. They laboriously type up yet another letter of authorization from the municipal authorities to the communities I'll be visiting, and say they'll come find me when they're ready to travel.

I go chat some more with the education coordinator, whom I'll call Pedro. The education promoters are receiving teacher training from a diferent Mexico City collective than the last municipality where I was working. The trainings are shorter, only one week every two months, and Pedro says the promoters are only beginning to meet among themselves to discuss their own ideas for adapting the curriculum, including more orientation toward the platform of Zapatista demands. He notes that their lack of a funded project puts them at a disadvantage compared to the health system in this municipality, or the education system in the other municipality supported by the solidarity collective from Greece. He tells me the official government teachers are only interested in completing their lesson plans on schedule and drawing their pay, whereas the Zapatista teachers are interested in the learning process: They don't move on from one lesson to the next until they're sure all the students understand, without using competition for grades or punishments. Yet some of the parents complain, out of earshot of the education promoters, that they can't be sure the kids are learning since they don't receive report cards.

Pedro insists that what's important is that the students really learn, so that some day they can be given Zapatista commissions to work in health or education or autonomous government--replacing their parents' generation, some of whom still can't read and write, he notes. He has been working in education since 1999 and is proud of his work, but frustrated that many communities are so poor they can't provide enough corn to sustain the volunteer education promoters: "How can your community support you if they're also trying to survive in the resistance?" Pedro then excuses himself, explaining that he has just finished computer classes which he takes on weekends at the Caracol and is off to help make construction blocks before heading back to his village two hours away.

The health coordinator had presented a somewhat less precarious picture of his sector. There are health promoters in nearly all the communities in this municipality, seven micro-clinics in the subregions, and one main clinic with a general practitioner and a gynecologist. The brightly painted cinderblock building housing the clinic looks impressive, and there is a new-looking ambulance parked in front. However the coordinator, whom I'll call José, noted that the medicine supply would run out in a month when a Basque-funded project expired, and they haven't yet found another source. The communities also have a hard time coming up with food and bus fare for the promoters who often have to travel far from home for workshops, and of course they have to prioritize feeding the patients.

The councilmembers fill me in about land issues and about the "Honor and Justice Commissions," the Zapatista judicial system. I ask specifically about the land claims of the non-Zapatista peasant organization ARIC, whose members had participated in some of the "recoveries" of wealth finqueros' land. One compa from the council gives an example from his own community where ARIC representatives took their case to the Zapatista autonomous council, all points of view got a hearing, and land was awarded to the non-Zapatistas. As in the previous municipality where I've been working, they tell me that a majority of their cases are actually brought by non-Zapatistas because the government's judicial system is so corrupt, and even city folk from Macondo have been making the three-hour trek out here for Zapatista justice.

I stop at the café to say goodbye to the compas there and leave the book I've just finished reading during my long waits, a detective novel co-authored by Subcomandante Marcos and a Mexico City novelist, Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Marcos had proposed that they collaborate in writing it serially, taking turns writing alternate chapters, a "four-handed novel." Both are good writers whose characters speak in the idioms of the Chiapas countryside and Mexico City, respectively, and of course the novel is laced with caustic commentary on Mexican history and politics.

The council's departure is delayed by the backlog of cases waiting for them, so I stay another night and catch a truck to the first village at the crack of dawn. My contact there is an older man I know from his previous stint on the Junta, and he greets me like a long-lost friend when I show up at his house unannounced at 7:00 a.m. It turns out they just had a huge party at his house the night before because his niece got married, but being campesinos (and non-drinking Zapatistas) they're wide awake at this early hour. I spend most of the day helping them clean up from the party and hanging out talking to the extended family members, including his nephew who moved out of state years ago to become a traveling appliance salesman, but tries to hang onto what is left of his indigenous identity by coming back every few years for family gatherings like this. His wife and kids, citified and non-Tzeltal-speaking, tried hard not to look uncomfortable.

The Zapatista village authorities call an assembly in the evening and I get to have a fascinating, free-flowing community conversation about their experience of life and politics in an autonomous community. This is the first of six such meetings I have over the course of the week in far-flung communities, including several that require hiking a few hours through the jungle and fording the Jataté River (which is thankfully only knee-high in dry season). On one of those treks my guide asks me how old I am, probably noticing my huffing and puffing. He's clambering up and down the hills like a mountain goat, and I'm embarrassed to learn that he is 63. When I comment on his agility he says "Oh, I've slowed down a lot since my hernia operation."

Anyway, I was on the run all week and didn't have time to think about blogging, but it was a fascinating trip and I learned many things. One interesting bit of news is that there is a now a barrio in Macondo with about 300 residents that has declared itself an urban Zapatista community, with structures of self-governance much like in the villages. Apparently its core were campesinos who were Zapatista supporters but fled to the city in fear after the 1994 uprising, but now have decided to openly return to the fold. It's another example of how the Zapatista movement is gaining new members on the one hand even though it is also losing some on the other hand (with the media of course only reporting the latter). I also heard many moving tales from Zapatistas living on "recovered" land, of how their lives were qualitatively changed from the dark days of near-slavery on the fincas. The Zapatistas on these recovered lands are not unsympathetic to the land claims of their brethren in the various branches of the now-divided ARIC organization, whom they recognize are also poor peasants, and they have ceded land to those groups. However, they are very aware that the government deliberately pits those groups against the Zapatistas. They also firmly believe that it was their own militant stand that ultimately won the land, when ARIC was backing down and succumbing to government cooptation in the 1980s and '90s.

Another fascinating insight was that the Zapatistas have indirectly gained something from the government programs designed to lure peasants away from the EZLN. The government showers those non-Zapatistas with gifts like tin roofing sheets and solar panels and construction material and start-up items for production projects; but the non-Zapatistas have become so accustomed to the endless flow of free things that they often sell them off at bargain-basement prices - to Zapatistas! The non-Zapatistas have little interest in community improvement or production when they think the government will take care of them forever, and often they're more interested in cash to buy liquor or pay smugglers to take them to the U.S.

Many of the communities in this region are right on the edge of subsistence. One problem they have on some of the recovered lands is that the wealthy landowners used the land as pasture for cattle for so long that the densely-packed earth is not very good for corn planting, unless they can plow with tractors. But that can't be done on hilly land, and even on the flatlands it requires money to rent the tractor. Even though the extra corn yields would make it well worth the tractor rental, the autonomous municipality only owns one tractor which is not enough for all the communities, and many communities lack the cash up-front for the rental. It's the old development problem, it takes money to get money. Cash-flow problems also mean that campesinos often have to sell a little corn at a moment when they need money, not knowing how good the harvest will be over the rest of the year, and later sometimes have to buy back corn at a much higher price to feed their families. Some of the poorer communities are currently without teachers because the community can no longer afford to offer some corn to the unpaid education promoters, who can't work full-time on their own cornfields because they are busy teaching and traveling to the teacher-training workshops. I ponder the mathematics of this and realize what a precarious local economy it reflects: A village of say 30 families could each pitch in say 3% of their corn crop to feed one education promoter, but apparently they're too close to the margin of subsistence to afford that, though they all say education is a high priority. The people in these communities recognize that the struggle is for the long haul, and they have an impressive clarity and spirit of resistance.

The week of conversations in the communities was too rich an experience to summarize in a few paragraphs, but I'll stop for now. The return trip was the usual adventure: The 3 a.m. bus was too full to stop, so I caught a 4 a.m. ride on a pick-up truck that broke down a couple of times and then ran out of gas (requiring the driver to wake someone up in a village in the middle of the night to sell him a jugfull), then got stuck in the mud so we all had to get out and pull the truck on a rope, tug-of-war style for 100 meters or so, covering ourselves with mud in the process. I got back to San Cristóbal exhausted, nursing a bad cold from a week in the rain, covered from head to toe with insect bites that had become infected, but charged up from the experience of being in the autonomous communities. I had just set down my backpack when the doorbell rang and 4 of the teacher trainers from the Mexico City collective showed up on my doorstep. So for the last few days I've had a wonderful time visiting with them, and they helped me throw a party on the 27th to celebrate my birthday, one of the most memorable I've ever had.

The teacher trainers told a fascinating tale about an attempt by the United Nations to start a development program in this region, which I'll have to write about in another blog entry because I'm scrambling to finish up some other things now. I'm off to Oaxaca tomorrow (12-hour bus ride to the west) to meet some friends from Ann Arbor who will be there, then on to Mexico City for a seminar, returning to San Cristóbal on February 9.