From the mountains of the Mexican southeast

Tuesday February 28 at 4:30 a.m. I leave for the jungle with Bernard, the French sociologist researching autonomous education. We have some overlapping interests in our work and plan to combine efforts on this trip. Heading for the teacher training school in El Conejo, we take a circuitous route that Bernard claims is faster and has more paved roads, but that requires five changes of vehicles at various remote junctions and a hike of a half hour or so at one stretch before a truck comes by. But he's right, we arrive around 2:00 p.m. instead of around 6:00 by the route I usually take.

The trip is relatively uneventful, though we are stopped at one army roadblock. The soldiers ask who we are and where we're going and why, so we become French tourists who speak little Spanish, on our way to a scenic lagoon. While we are stopped, an officer comes out to ask the driver whether traffic is passing normally through Buciljá. We had just read a small article the day before in La Jornada, the only paper publishing anything approaching accurate news of Chiapas, that a fight had just broken out there over land in which several were wounded by machete and one member of the paramilitary organization OPDDIC shot dead. Details are still sketchy, but our sources indicate that those presumed responsible for the death are peasants who were angry about having been violently displaced from their land, and who had once been Zapatistas but left the organization about six years ago. But the incident conveniently gives OPDDIC their first martyr at a moment when their leader Pedro Chulín is running for Congress, and provides another pretext for blaming tensions on the Zapatistas. Later on the last leg of our journey on a truck full of non-Zapatistas, we can make out enough of the animated conversation in Tzeltal (interspersed with Spanish words) to know that the buzz is all about the events at Buciljá, the caliber of the weapons used, the political affiliations of those involved, etc.

Arriving at El Conejo we are delighted to find two members of the teacher training collective from Mexico City, Andrea and Adela. Now that the teacher training school is in its third graduation and the members of the first graduatinig class have been prepared to take over the training themselves--autonomy in action--the collective is shifting to new support activities. They are working with the autonomous authorities to develop an advanced curriculum in agroecology, for promoters who would spread the knowledge and techniques through community workshops. They are also working on setting up a fair trade coffee marketing network to help the communities generate income to make the teacher training program self-sustaining. I've been helping with some of the contacts and logistics from San Cristóbal, since were all green (so to speak) in the coffee business.

Bernard and I go to the river with Adán, a student from the National Pedagogical University doing his thesis on Zapatista education, for a quick bath before the rains. Then we hang out catching up with Andrea and Adela and waiting for our appointment with the municipal council. Bernard and I have some ideas for interviews and visits to surrounding communities to fill in sosme gaps in our respective research. A tired-looking council member I'll call Arturo receives us around 8:00 p.m., and even though he knows both of us and our work, he says we will need to go back to the Junta for another authorization, since our letters are general and several months old. Maybe he's just particularly careful, or maybe this is another reflection of the heightened tension since the Buciljá incident. Of course we're disappointed after the long trip, but we get to chat with some folks from the community and with some of the enthusiastic young education promoters from around the municipality, with whom we are sharing a shed for the night.

One of the promoters, whom I'll call Horacio, has studied all the way through prepa (high school) in San Cristóbal, a rare accomplishment. He tells us he worked as a virtual slave in a hotel in town for room and board to put himself through school, for an owner who screamed at him all the time. He had to take a break from teacher training to accompany a brother with leukemia to Mérida for medical treratment, working there as a receptionist to support the two of them and pay for treatment. His brother died after two years of treatment, and now Horacio is back to his studies to become a volunteer teacher in the autonomous schools. This is a guy who knows the meaning of sacrifice and focus.

We're up again at 4:00 a.m. to catch a ride with a truck to a junction where we can make a connection to a town where Adela and Andrea are going to work on arrangements for the purchase of five tons of coffee. Bernard and I say goodbye to them there and get a bus to Macondo, and from there a truck down the canyon to the Caracol, arriving at 2:00 p.m. We are amused to see an SUV from the UNDP parked outside the Junta office. Bernard knows one of the compas on the Vigilance Commission from a previous teacher training, so he takes the opportunity to ask what's up with the UN. The man snorts and says, "Oh, them! They keep showing up and claiming they have rooms full of money for us. Liars! They visited some communities too. I think the Junta is going to send them away."

While we're waiting to see the Junta, we strike up a conversation with two of the UN guys. They had been waiting a long time and looked unhappy. The head of the team, Oscar, pretended he didn't know who Bernard was, though we heard he had been asking others about him back in San Cristóbal. We asked what kind of development plans they had, and Oscar responded in the bland bureaucratese of the UNDP, about potable water and sanitation, productive projects for sustainable development, incorporating a gender perspective in development planning, etc. Yet when pressed for details, it became obvious that he was clueless about conditions in the region and hadn't given much thought to appropriate projects. I asked whether they were working with the government or had government approval to start projects in Zapatista regions, and he replied that they had "cover" under a generic agreement signed between the UN and the Mexican government around 2002 permitting assistance to indigenous communities without regard for political affiliation. The accord had been signed after a visit by Francis Deng, UN head of relief for displaced persons. I thought it was interesting that he chose the word "cover," since surely the UN mission was in daily contact with government officials and would not have undertaken a project in rebel territory without discussions with the government, but this way they didn't have to leave a public record of those discussions since they had the fig-leaf of a generic authorization. While we wait, a Junta member comes out to help a couple of foreigners carry their backpacks to the camp, then he stops to help load a squealing and squirming pig onto a truck before returning to his duties. No standing on ceremony here.

The Junta attends us before the UN folks, much to Oscar's chagrin, promising to prepare our letters of authorization and grant us an interview later. Afterwards we overhear someone say that the Junta wouldn't have time to receive the UN team that day and they drive off, presumably not wanting to to stay the night in rustic conditions like all other visitors to the Caracol. Apparently the UN team's tantrum on their previous visit did not endear them to the Zapatista authorities. Bernard and I watch from the sidelines with some amusement, wondering if they'd be back. Then we sit on logs to prepare our interview questions for the Junta.

We chat with a couple of young Germans from Leipzig who are about to head out to a village at dawn to be human rights observers, then we crash early to catch up on lost sleep. Thursday morning we go bathe in the river, which is quite low in dry season, an excursion enlivened when our path is crossed by a nauyaca (fer-de-lance), the jungle's most poisonous snake. Then we hang out with a compa from the Vigilance Commission, Gerónimo, while waiting for the Junta. He came as a small child around 1980 from over the next mountain with his family, seeking land. The government at the time was allowing some settlement of poor quality "national lands" in the jungle as an escape valve for rural unrest. But by 1981 they were organizing in an independent peasant union, and by 1983 they joined the then-clandestine EZLN when they realized they were just being used and cheated by the leaders of the other peasant group. They moved down from their perch on the rocky mountainside to recover better land from the wealthy rancher, who quickly realized he'd be better off taking government compensation than battling a large group of organized peasants.

Gerónimo explains that because it was cattle land, the yields for corn were about four times higher if they could plow the land with a tractor. But one of the two tractors belonging to the autonomous municipality had broken, and there was no money to repair the tractor or rent another. Even though the expense would more than pay for itself in increased yields, these poor peasants in rebellion had no access to credit. Moreover, I suspected that there were organizational obstacles to figuring out their own financial arrangements and equitably distributing benefits among community members with differing kinds of land and resource endowments. Perhaps the concept of generating a surplus--now needed for investment in autonomous social services such as health and education--was also not a familiar one in these subsistence communities.

Sara, a Basque member of the solidarity collective that runs the café as a fundraiser for education projects, whips us up a creative lunch of spaghetti with a can of tuna and the ubiquitous tortillas, a break from beans. A brief rainstorm passes through, bringing temporary relief from the afternoon heat. We move a barrel to the corner of the roof to catch some rainwater for the kitchen, since the pipe that brings in spring water from the mountains seems to have broken.

Around 4:00 p.m. the Junta sends for us and gives us our new letters of authorization, this time addressed to all four municipalities which will hopefully save some return trips. We leave a copy of the questions we have drafted for our interview with the Junta, which they say they'll translate into Tzeltal and discuss and call us back in a day or two when they're ready for the interview. In the evening Bernard looks up the education committee representative for the municipality, a 35 year old man I'll call Gilberto with long experience as a political organizer in this canyon. We chat with him in the camp about his work and he shares some interesting reflections as his son entertains himself tossing pebbles in the dirt. He speaks sadly about the way members of the non-Zapatista peasant organizations are duped by their leaders and by the government, and explains how some come back to the Zapatista movement and are accepted after a trial period. He tells us the government's welfare program, Oportunidades, requires the women from the villages to go into Macondo to collect their cash, so they wind up spending it on transport and expensive city goods and liquor demanded by their husbands (who get drunk and beat them). Then the families, dependent on government handouts instead of working their fields, end up trading the government gifts like construction materials with Zapatistas for corn and beans.

Gilberto also tells us that after numerous visits by the UN team, who kept demanding more and more information to fill out endless paperwork but never produced any of the promised proposals or resources, they suspected that the real purpose of the mission was to feed intelligence to the government. Balancing caution against giving them the benefit of the doubt, Gilberto told us the Junta had denied permission for the UN to work in the education or health sectors, but gave them a trial housing project to work on as a test of their sincerity.

Friday morning we sign up for an appointment with the municipal council, but there's already a long line of people who have come from all around the county with a variety of issues to resolve. While waiting we chat with one of the authorities from another municipality, and the theme of the UN comes up. He says they just keep insisting on more and more meetings, more information, but never deliver anything. "If they have the heart to help, that's fine," he explained, "but we didn't go asking for anything." The most benign interpretation of the whole UN episode would be that the bureaucratic requirements of a large development institution do not mesh well with the local culture and forms of organization.

The Council finally receives us around 4:00 p.m., and they are tired from an intense day of problem-solving, so the interview is not terribly productive. But I give them a copy of all my interview notes from communities in the municipality, and request permission to attend Bernard's teacher training session in the Caracol starting on Sunday. Around 8:00 p.m. they Junta calls us in for the long-awaited interview. The full Junta is there, plus two members of the Information Commission who are clearly more seasoned cadre. They apologize for the delay, explaining that they've had a heavy workload. They speak clearly and directly, for example about the importance of autonomous education for preserving the culture and raising consciousness about the Zapatista struggle; the efforts to insure that the justice system attends to all sides with equity and respect; and the ongoing challenge of maintaining autonomy in dealings with outside actors and organizations. We ask about the UN mission, and the Junta responds that the UN representatives had come with the same discourse as the government, that they had been deceitful, but that the Junta was not closing the door to dialogue in case they really wanted to help.

Saturday morning, Bernard and I get up at 6:00 and catch a truck ride around 7:30 to Macondo. Our mission is to buy provisions for the 20 education promoters who will be arriving Sunday for a week of training, as well as supplies requested by the collective that runs the Caracol's café. We share the back of the truck going into town with three prostitutes returning from servicing the army base further down the canyon. They talk loudly and crudely for the next few hours incessantly while the Tzeltal passengers try to ignore them, and two small children swaddled in a blanket sleep in the bouncing truckbed, their heads propped against a jerry can of gas.

Bernard and I meet up at the truck depot in Macondo with a couple more trainers who have just arrived by overnight bus from Mexico City. Gema, 23, studies pedagogy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and Marina, 21, is in Latin American Studies. Both are cutting classes to volunteer a week of their time for teacher training, and they've brought their own homework along, as well as boxes of photocopied materials for the classes they'll be giving. Marina has been volunteering on this project for a year, Gema for six months. Marina is thinking of doing her thesis on the mural art in Zapatista communities as a form of cultural and political expression. She remarks that the UNAM serves as a kind of cadre school, with each professor imparting his or her particular political line and the students learning to define and defend their own positions.

We arrive back at the Caracol around 2:00 p.m., and while we are unloading supplies we run into Andrea and Adela who are on their way out. They have successfully negotiated an agreement wiwth the Junta to use the machinery in the Caracol to process the five tons of coffee they're buying, to distribute via fair trade networks to help fund schools in one autonomous municipality. I'm impressed by their energy and creativity in running around the region to make all these arrangements. They don't have time to tell us the details as they're catching a ride on a truck that's about to leave. Tomorrow they're off to San Cristóbal where I've emailed Bela to ask her to give them a key to my house so they can crash there, and I give them a name and phone number of someone in the fair trade coffee network there who might be able to advise them on the transport and distribution end of the operation.

The camp is filling up. Bernard and I help Gema and Marina hang their hammocks in the camp. I hang out in the evening talking to a Basque world traveler, who has shown up in the Caracol to see if there's any volunteer work he can do for a week or so. A Québécois and a New Yorker have also appeared, looking for interesting volunteer opportunities as they travel through the hemisphere. The Junta seems to be puzzling over what to do with volunteers for such short periods who are not already connected to an organization or project, but the travelers are patient and continue to hope something will materialize.

Later I chat outside the café for awhile with the education crowd--Bernard the researcher, Gema the teacher trainer, Germán from a city in northern Mexico who serves as education promoter in a remote community of five families and married a Tzeltal woman there, and another Basque guy whose solidarity collective has a project for a secondary school in a nearby municipality. Bernard and Gema muse about why some communities have such a hard time recruiting and retaining education promoters, and occasionally have to turn to outsiders like Germán to give classes, which doesn't really advance autonomy. Of course the unpaid position entails sacrifice, and the communities have varying capacity to support their promoters with some corn or a commitment of labor to tend their milpa while they are in classes or training. Bernard sees a kind of vicious cycle in which some promoters feel unsupported and put less than full energy into the job, leading the community to lose enthusiasm for supporting them.

Germán adds the observation that women are even less willing to become promoters because a man might hope that rotating community labor will relieve him of some tasks in his cornfield, "But for a woman, are they going to go into her house and make the tortillas for her?" He suggests that the problem might be mitigated by giving the woman an equivalent cornfield which she might sell or rent, but that would present a host of other complications. Harvey the Basque guy notes that the new role of community teacher ruptures the customary social relations in which there is little division of labor, where everyone is relatively equal as a subsistence campesino cultivator of corn. The person who takes on teaching duties and relegates farm labor to others starts to lose the quality of campesino (an important component of identity in these communities) and is viewed with skepticism as an haragán, a shirker of honest labor. It's an interesting dimension to consider, though I think it depends on the collective consciousness of the promoter and community alike, as well as creativity in devising equitable burden-sharing schemes.

The conversation turns to why some communities are better organized than others. In this community where the Caracol is located, the school has been abandoned for some time. Ironically it seems that education often falls by the wayside in these regional government centers. The constant flow of visitors from surrounding communities and the outside world, the frequent hosting of meetings and celebrations and political events for the region, all create a distraction for the children whose curiosity pulls them away from classes, or from helping in the cornfields and kitchens as children do in other communities. Education promoters in a Caracol like this one also feel that their every move is subject to scrutiny by the municipal and regional authorities and by the ever-present hordes of visitors, and they don't last long in the job. Someone observes that more remote communities that are subject to more military/paramilitary harassment tend to develop better organization and unity out of sheer necessity.

Also, communities of 100% Zapatistas on land recovered from wealthy landowners tend to be much more unified in the resistance than the historic ejidos. Part of the reason is that the recovered land is "owned" collectively by the Zapatistas, so anyone who leaves the movement would lose their right to work the land which reverst to the collective. The ejidos, on the other hand, can be divided by government programs such as PROCEDE, the 1992 agrarian counterreform that allows individuals to separate from the ejido with an individual title to their portion of the land, which can subsequently be sold. The government sweetens the inducement to abandon collective forms of organization with a variety of individually targeted handout programs. I'm planning to leave the teacher training session early on Friday to travel six hours or so to the northern zone to a meeting of ejidos and NGOs strategizing to oppose PROCEDE.

Saturday night it rains overnight, and Sunday is a slow morning of conversation with the Basques and the trainers and helping assemble sets of photocopied materials for the workshop. Bernard and I go for a bath in the river, which is muddy from the previous night's rain. Later in the afternoon the first education promoters start to arrive from the more distant communities, a stream that will continue through Monday morning when those from more nearby communities arrive. Gema and Marina are diligently working on their homework. I write a letter of recommendation for a Mexican student applying to a Master's program in social anthropology in Chiapas who wants to compare indigenous autonomy movements, then I work on a short article on zapatismo for a French solidarity publication. The sun finally comes out, so hopefully my clothes will dry before the pigs come by and smear them up with mud.

By Monday morning the education promoters have all arrived from 3 of the 4 municipalities in the region (the fourth has its own teacher training school at El Conejo). They are 19 men and one woman (with her 5-year-old daughter), ranging in age from 15 to 45. First we clean out the school and library buildings, then agree on a final class schedule and rotating shifts of cooks and cleaners. The trainers and I will cook all the main meals in the afternoon so the promoters won't have to miss any classes. The session opens with the singing of the Zapatista anthem, everyone standing at attention and giving the left-handed Zapatista salute. Then Bernard launches into some high-energy "dynamics," exercises to get the body moving and the synapses firing and to build camraderie. I take my shift cooking for 24 (rice and beans and coffee, our diet for the week). In the afternoon there is a combined history and reading comprehension exercise with the text of the Plan de Ayala, Zapata's original agrarian reform proposal from the era of the Mexican Revolution. The archaic Spanish is difficult for the promoters whose native tongue is Tzeltal, so the four of us (I've been drafted to help in the training) circulate among the groups, offering encouragement and context and explanations of vocabulary words with examples relevant to life in the communities here. The promoters struggle, but they help each other and seem pleased with the idea of understanding the words of the legendary Zapata.

In the late afternoon there is an exercise reflecting on the philosophy of autonomous education and the roles of the promoters, trainers, and community. They have widely varying levels of experience--some of the older folks had studied a few years in government schools and had comparative perspective, while some of the new promoters had not yet taught their first class--and there is a process of socialization as the veterans give examples of successful and unsuccessful interactions with students and community. Later over coffee, Bernard and I talk with one of the older promoters who tells us he never had any schooling at all, and his parents didn't want a teacher in the community because they never saw a use for letters and thought that teachers "just organize school parties and make the families contribute." But he always wanted to learn and made a habit of copying all the letters he saw, following around the evangelical pastors and other literate people who came through and coaxing lessons out of them. After the rebellion he wanted to be an education promoter, but the community kept bypassing him and naming other youner folks who had some formal education, arguing that they had to compete with the official schools that had "teachers with titles." After they didn't work out, the community finally turned to this self-taught man with a thirst for knowledge, who is evidently doing a great job and enjoying it immensely.

Tuesday is math most of the day. The emphasis is on practical exercises, solving problems that might arise in daily life in the communities, as an example of relevant teaching techniques. The compas play a kind of treasure hunt game, with each team inventing math problems and planting the cards in various spots in the community for the other teams to find and solve. They deal with distribution of land, apportioning of costs or harvests, and sometimes more whimsical puzzles: If a compañero is in the resistance for 12 years, and another has only been with the Organization 7 years, how many more days is the first compa in the resistance than the second one? In the afternoon we get in a much-needed bath, even though the river is down to a shallow dry-season stream. The camp starts to fill up in the evening with foreigners coming to see if they can be useful during short stays, but we're meeting until late at night reviewing curriculum and pedagogy so we don't get a chance to talk with them.

Wednesday is history in the morning, and we start out discussing the meaning of community in the context of the history of the Zapatista rebellion. We talk about the historical significance of today, March 8, International Day of Women's Struggles, and from there get sidetracked as the compas want to talk about all the days in the year that have historical significance to them (perhaps reflecting the special importance of the calendar in Mayan cultures). It's not an abstract discussion: When we get to October 12, Day of the Race, one compa says quietly, "That's the day we marched into San Cristóbal on the 500th anniversary of the Spanish invasion, 1992, and pulled down the statue of the conquistador
Diego de Mazariegos." We. Most of the promoters were too young to have participated in the 1994 uprising, and they are fascinated when we show a clip of the 1994 takeover of towns from a pirated documentary DVD on a borrowed laptop.

More foreigners have appeared, from a sister city project in Oakland, California, and a wooden stage is being set up in the middle of the Caracol for a party to celebrate International Women's Day. The UN is also back in town, their SUV parked in front of the Junta building and the team sitting around the edge of the basketball court waiting and fidgeting uncomfortably. Bernard and I approach one of the UNers sporting a monogrammed shirt and penny loafers (the casual technocrat look) and strike up a conversation. Julio is a well-intentioned Spaniard in his 50s who has worked in Mozambique and Brazil on education projects and is now based in Quintana Roo in the Yucatan. He has been called in as a consultant on this project that's going nowhere since, as he explained, the folks in headquarters figured he knew something about working with Mayans. That's sort of like calling in someone who works in China to consult in Iraq since it's all Asia. They also brought in two consultants who had worked in health and education projects in Chiapas 20 years ago. Anyway, Julio has all of a week to spare to figure out "the Mayans" and get back to his regular assignment. He goes back to his SUV to pull out a book to show us an example of his latest UN work: A glossy color photo book of the reptiles of Yucatan, in Spanish and Yucatecan Mayan. Terrific, I'm sure that's just what people in that impoverished region need, now we can check that "intercultural" box on the program guide and move on, What's the name of the next country again?

Wednesday evening a band mounts the platform set up in the middle of the Caracol and starts blaring cumbia music, the start of a fiesta to celebrate International Women's Day. We send a representative to the Junta to ask if they could turn the volume down a bit until classes are over at 8:00 p.m., but they say please forgive us compañeros, but it's International Women's Day and the community is celebrating. Oh well, everything is education, after all. More foreigners have arrived for the festivities, including a couple of young Basque guys whom Marina promptly dubs "the hippies," playing an ancestral instrument that looks something like a marimba or xylophone but is hit with vertical sticks. They entertain the crowd, followed by a guitar and vocal performance by the collective that runs the café, then a Junta member reads a speech celebrating women's struggles for justice and equality. Then the music and dancing continue into the wee hours of the morning.

By Thursday morning we've all had little sleep and have a full schedule of language, history, and natural science classes. Cooking for our group of 24 is further complicated since water has run out and now has to be hauled in buckets from across the Caracol. I'm dashing back and forth between throwing more wood on the fire, hauling water and teaching classes on the history of the Mexican Revolution. Bernard has to leave early and scores a ride on a truck leaving in the afternoon. I hadn't planned to be more than a casual observer of the training, but they were clearly short-handed and invited me to help, so I'm actually happy to dive in. Marina observes during one of the breaks, "You miss teaching, don't you?" And I have to admit, while I don't miss my heaving class load back in Gringoland, I do enjoy teaching.

In the evening a puppet troupe from Mexico City shows up. They've offered to do puppet workshops and the Junta has authorized them to tour the region, so we invite them to join the promoters for evening coffee (dinner) and plan to fit in an abbreviated workshop geared to classroom use the next day. By the time Marina and Gema and I finish our nightly evaluation and curriculum planning meeting, it's nearly 1:00 a.m. and I have to catch a 5:00 a.m. ride to Macondo with some Junta members who are heading that way on a commission.

Friday morning I get to Macondo around 8:00 a.m., have a breakfast with real eggs, buy some more food provisions and head out to the northern zone of Chiapas for the meeting agianst PROCEDE (agrarian counterreform). On the next leg of the trip I'm on a truck next to a guy who looks like a finquero, with a pot belly and blue jeans and nice cowboy boots. He quizzes me suspiciously about where I'm going, and when I mention the next town--not exactly on the tourist beat--he wants to know why. The northern zone has a history of violent responses by landowners to peasant movements, so I don't really want to discuss my purpose. Fortunately I'm spared from responding as the truck lurches to a halt and the driver announces he's not in fact going to the town he had said he was, so we have to get off and look for another truck. I make the change and get to the next town, where I stop for a sandwich before continuing the journey. Finally around 1:30 p.m. I arrive in the ejido where the assembly is to take place.

A tarp and tables have been set up on a street off the plaza for registration of attendees. A stream of Chól and Tzeltal campesinos, many barefood or in huaraches (sandals) and wearing the traditional white cotton shirt and white rolled-up pants) and representatives of peasant organizations and NGOs are filing through to receive credentials, meal tickets, and a styrofoam plate and cup for the 3-day meetings. Sessions begin in the multipurpose hall with over 300 in attendance.









Indigenous elders offer opening prayers in the direction of the four cardinal points.
Then there are presentations giving basic background on PROCEDE, locating the program in the context of neoliberal policies of the last two decades. The organizers announce that there is already government harassment of the meeting, with an army roadblock set up outside the nearest town leading to the ejido and soldiers interrogating those arriving for the meeting. A social anthropologist gives a Powerpoint presentation of survey research he did that debunks government claims, showing widespread intimidation and misinformation in the promotion of the program. The evening closes with a documentary film on the effects of one agrarian community in the state of Guerrero to educate themselves about their rights and resist PROCEDE.

At the end of the evening, the hundreds of attendees are matched up with local ejido members who have volunteered to house the visitors. I'm with a batch of three Tzeltales and two Ch'oles, sleeping on the floor of a Tzeltal family on the outskirts of town. It's a cinderblock house with a cement floor, but it's otherwise a campesino home with hammocks draped from the beams, a pile of ears of corn in the hallway, and burlap sacks of coffee beans in the living room. Our host offers us coffee and beans and tortillas, and some sheets of newspaper for the bathroom. He turns out to be a PRD supporter with a big López Obrador poster in the living room. He is also a religious man who offers long prayers in Tzeltal before each meal. Father and son eke out a living on a milpa an hour and a half's walk away, and another son is a roadie for popular bands in the northern Mexican industrial city of Monterrey, presumably the source of the cash for the house. It strikes me that this is a rare meeting where Zapatistas are (discreetly, unofficially) in attendance at a gathering with activists from rival non-Zapatista organizations and parties. It seems to be partly a reflection of heavyhanded government tactics that manage to unite a diverse opposition to programs harmful to indigenous peasants; and partly the more flexible approach to alliances that the Zapatistas have been trying out since the July 2005 Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle.

The working sessions are hampered by power outage, which as it turns out was exactly what the government did the last time there was an assembly of opponents to PROCEDE. So the fans are not functioning in the stifling heat and speakers have to use a battery-powered megaphone, but there is plenty of patience and goodwill as comments are laboriously translated between Spanish, Tzeltal and Ch'ol. Participants share stories confirming all the studies indicating government coercion and deceit to steal land rights from the peasantry, and they struggle to understand the presentations on legal strategies and human rights. Some speakers point out that mass organization and direct action are necessary complements, without which the law alone is always on the side of the powerful. Many speakers identify their organizations--except for the Zapatistas, who only mention it quietly in one-on-one conversations, though Zapata's face gazes sternly on the gathering from a black-and-white poster that says "No to PROCEDE!" In the afternoon plenary, creative strategies are put forward, including staged escalations of direct actions (highway blockages, takeovers of agrarian reform offices) and coalitions with other grups, such as those boycotting payment of electric bills.


Miraculously for such a large and diverse assembly, the meetings end in the drafting of a consensual joint declaration and a list of proposed actions, which each representative will take back to their ejido or organization for approval. Then there will be a follow-up meeting in April in the parish in Ocosingo to decide and vote on the actions. The conveners announce on the last day that they have caught three soldiers dressed in civilian clothes who infiltrated the gathering with cameras to photograph participants, another sign that the government sees peaceful peasant organizing as an intolerable threat.

I'm spared the series of truck rides for the return on Sunday by catching a ride with a human rights lawyer heading back to San Cristóbal. I arrive around 9:00 p.m., exhausted and suffering from a couple of weeks of infected insect bites, but charged up from the field work as always. I'm leaving Tuesday for the Latin American Studies Association meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which means I have only one day in town to do a zillion things. I squeeze in a visit to a doctor who was recommended by an anthropologist friend, and fortunately the doctor has worked in the jungle region and knows exactly what the insect bites are. She prescribes a liquid used on cattle to kill ticks and other critters, plus a topical antibiotic. Now all I need is sleep and I'll be on the road to recovery.