From the mountains of the Mexican southeast

In some ways it feels like I never left. Taking advantage of the winter break, I returned to Chiapas from December 18, 2006 to January 8, 2007. My main objective was to finish up research in the last of four Zapatista autonomous municipios (counties) in the region where I was working during last year's sabbatical. My travels to the jungle communities had been halted last May, when the Zapatistas declared a red alert and closed access to the communities following the government repression of a peasant group (which was affiliated with the Zapatista "Other Campaign") at San Salvador Atenco outside Mexico City. Since then, further repression of striking teachers in the state of Oaxaca (bordering Chiapas) sparked a broad-based mobilization there called APPO, the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, which the government is still trying to suppress with massive arrests and torture of detainees. But things are relatively calm in Chiapas, and the Zapatistas have lifted their alert and are preparing for a 4-day Encuentro or "encounter" (December 30 to January 2) with the network of progressive organizations around the country that they've been cultivating under the framework of the Other Campaign.

My flight from Mexico City to Tuxtla was delayed for four hours, allegedly for bad weather, though friends later told me that was the standard excuse for cancelling and combining flights that didn't fill. My bag arrived torn, and when I went to file a claim I was told the airline could send it out for repair, but I would be responsible for delivering and retrieving it to the airport an hour from San Cristóbal where I would be staying, so I gave up on the claim. Gerardo, the taxi driver that Bela had arranged to pick me up, was waiting patiently. He politely asked if I minded the blaring music in the cab, which I didn't as it was a nice marker of reentry to Mexico. He stopped for gas, a leisurely affair as he caught up on gossip with the station attendants. Then we came across a broken-down taxi on the winding road to San Cristóbal, so of course he had to stop to see if he could help a fellow cabbie get his car running. Our journey was slow but well blessed, as Gerardo crossed himself energetically at the beginning and end of the trip and at every bridge and church along the way.

Peter and María Elena had kindly offered to let me stay in their house while they were out of town, but I arrived too late at night to pick up the key, so Bela and Sangit put me up for the night. The next morning I picked up the key from Ernesto, who runs a small NGO that tracks the low-intensity war here and monitors human rights violations by the army and paramilitaries. He recently started a little cafe/restaurant operation that also rents space to some Zapatista artisanry cooperatives and other NGOs. I asked Ernesto if he knew of any trucks heading to the jungle, since I had brought down $1,200 in donations to buy school supplies for the Zapatista autonomous schools in the region where I've been working. He said as a matter of fact he might be taking a trip with a large van the next morning, stopping first at another Caracol (regional Zapatista center) but then to my destination.

So the scramble was on to assemble and pack the supplies in one day. I tried to reactivate my cell phone which didn't seem to be working, and was told I had to go to the Telcel customer service office across town. Once that was accomplished, I called Bela to tell her the good news about the possible transport, since she has been storing school supplies in her house and serving as a waystation and providing invaluable logistical support for the project. She offered to hire the trusty Gerardo and go to Tuxtla an hour away to buy the supplies, which was a huge help as I had an impossible number of things to do in the remaining hours, and I was rediscovering that everything takes four times as long to accomplish in Mexico. So I ran to a large stationery store to buy six big boxes of chalk, which I knew they didn't have at the discount supply store in Tuxtla, then dashed to a bank to stand in line for an hour to change money, then back to Bela's with the cash and list. Then I went off in search of empty cardboard boxes for the repacking, hitting up the egg ladies in the marketplace and several stores, then in search of a hardware store for packing tape, then to buy a few provisions for the trip.

While waiting for Bela and Gerardo to return, I went to see Don Andrés, the respected local historian who is a collaborator on the book project I'm co-editing with Bruno and Mariana, a compilation by researchers working in Zapatista territories. Andrés was in high spirits as usual, talking with characteristic animation and French gesticulation about the upcoming Encuentro. I gave him a copy of the final version of the book proposal, which he is going to present to his old friend who directs one of the larger social science publishing houses. We're all enthusiastic about this project, which we envision as more participatory than many academic endeavors. We've already had several meetings in San Cristóbal and Mexico City of chapter authors, and the proposal has been circulating in drafts among the authors until we were all happy with it. We are also committed to getting permission from the Zapatista elected authorities in the respective regions where we're working to write about their experiences with autonomy, and then returning to discuss our drafts with them--unlike so many academics who consider themselves uniquely "objective," and who treat the populations they study as mere objects of their intellectual curiosity. Most of our chapter authors also do direct solidarity work in the communities, as educators, doctors, psychologists, agroecologists, etc., which gives them experience and a different kind of insight into the problems and possibilities of the autonomy movement.

After the meeting with Andrés I track down Liliana, an Argentine "movement doctor" who has just returned to Chiapas for another stint developing training programs for Zapatista health promoters. She always has an interesting grassroots perspective on political issues, and we exchange impressions of the current conjuncture in Mexican politics. A recent cover story in the left-leaning weekly Proceso discusses the strong ties that the incoming Calderón administration is building with the Army, a quasi-independent actor and power center in Mexican politics (as are the Church, the narcos, big business, the U.S., and the PRI's continuing network of local patronage/powerbrokers, in addition to the untouchable office of the Presidency itself). Calderón moved quickly to grant the military a large budget increase including hefty pay raises for the troops, apparently attempting to consolidate that alliance given his lack of legitimacy following his suspect claim of electoral victory. He also merged and reinforced two militarized federal police agencies (roughly equivalent to the U.S. FBI and ATF), an action of dubious constitutionality. Columnist Carlos Fazio, who closely follows the military, recently commented in the daily La Jornada that the mounting repression (e.g., in Atenco and Oaxaca) seems to reflect a "recomposition of Mexican authoritarianism," a more coercive variant than the old PRI patronage machine of fatter times.

Liliana offers to help pack the supplies, so we head off to Bela's. En route we encounter Roberto, the Italian who works in one of the human rights NGOs and stayed at my house during part of last year. He is agitated because he has been up all night at the hospital with his Dutch co-worker Jet, who delivered a stillborn baby. As he describes the situation and Liliana asks a few medical questions, it appears that a simple medical error may have been the cause of death. Roberto says Jet's partner's family, who are Mexican, all assembled at the hospital and took turns cradling the body of the dead infant and singing it lullabies, an experience that left his European sensibilities quite shaken. Death just seems so much more of a presence in everyone's lives and consciousness in Mexico.

We arrive to discover that the ever-resourceful Bela has already conscripted the guests in her small guesthouse operation to pack up the boxes, so there's no work left to be done. I go back to Peter and María Elena's house where I'm staying to finish my own preparation, and late that night I get confirmation that the trip is on and Ernesto will meet me at Bela's at 6:30 am to load the van and head for the jungle.

I had met Ernesto on several occasions over the years, but the trip gave me an opportunity to get to know him better. Originally from Veracruz, he moved to Chiapas after the 1994 rebellion and worked for several NGOs before founding his own. We arrive around 9:30 am in the first Caracol where he needs to gather some information from the Zapatista Junta de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Council, the rotating authorities for the region). He is working on a study of one of the newer paramilitary groups, OPDDIC, which has been staging provocative invasions of lands already "recovered" by Zapatistas from the wealthy landowners after 1994. It seems the agrarian reform officials have been working hand in hand with OPDDIC, offering quick legalization of the newly retaken lands as part of a carrot-and-stick strategy to induce Zapatistas to switch affiliations to OPDDIC. Apparently the Junta is in the middle of hearing some complicated cases when we arrive, so we end up waiting three hours until Ernesto can talk to them. It's a beautiful day, in the 70s and clear, surrounded by hills covered with a mix of tropical vegetation and pines reflecting the prized biodiversity of Chiapas.

We set out toward the next Caracol, and the road starts turning into a muddy mess of huge holes and puddles. We skid and slide and struggle over each hill, and finally we sink into a pit, stuck at an angle precariously perched at the edge of a steep drop. Another truck has gone off the other side of the road and is sunk in the mud, leaving only enough room for small vehicles to get by. A light 4-wheel-drive pickup scampers up the center of the road but sticks in the mud toward the top of the hill. After much pondering, we decide we can all pitch in to push the pickup out of the mud, and Ernesto stays behind with the van while I go ahead with the pickup to the Caracol to see if they can send help. I check in with the Vigilance Commission and explain the situation, and they start mobilizing a crew to go help.

Before they can head out, Ernesto arrives in the van. He reports that an army truck came and couldn't get past them on the road, so the soldiers attached a chain to the van and used their truck to pull, but the van just turned diagonally and was in danger of slipping off the hillside, so they had to stop; but now they couldn't release the chain or the van would tumble over the edge. At that point a truckload of Zapatista community folks came, and they tied ropes to the other end of the van and anchored them around trees, so the army truck could pull the front of the van without the back end slipping over the hillside. It worked! - a rare instance of army/Zapatista/NGO collaboration! As Ernesto recounted the story of the army's arrival, at one point he said "they chained me up," then he hastened to clarify, "I mean they hooked up a chain to the van--because the other would have been possible too with the army!" And everyone had a good laugh.

After waiting our turn, we went in to see the Junta. They were very pleased and grateful to receive the donated school supplies. I also explained that I wanted to continue my research in the remaining municipio that I hadn't visited. I told them about the book project and gave them a copy of a letter that the authors had jointly written, asking permission to write about the autonomous communities and proposing to discuss drafts of each chapter with the Juntas in our respective regions. After a brief consultation among themselves in Tzeltal, the Junta gave me the "lek ay" (approval), and promised to give me a letter of authorization later in the evening for my visit to the municipio.

I repair to the cafeteria for a welcome bowl of beans and chat with the solidarity workers who run the place as a fundraiser for Zapatista schools, a woman from the Basque Country and a Mexican man and woman. They are eager for news from the "outside world," which strikes me as amusing since they are only a few hours from town, but in fact they don't often have the opportunity to make the trip. At 9 pm I pick up my letter from the Junta, who are still hard at work, and I turn in early so I can find a truck heading toward my destination. The camp where visitors usually stay is being used to store cement blocks they are making for a construction project, but I sweep off the cement dust from some wooden planks and stretch out my sleeping bag to crash.

I catch a truck around 4:30 am and then take the opportunity to have a hearty breakfast and strong coffee in town, since it may be awhile before I see those again. Then I go to the lot behind the marketplace where trucks and buses pick up passengers and cargo bound for jungle communities. I ask around for vehicles leaving for the community I'll call Santa María, seat of the autonomous municipality, and after a couple of hours a truck is leaving that I'm told is heading there. I'm dropped off at a village that turns out to be the wrong one, and I realize that there are many communities named after the same saint. Fortunately it is also a Zapatista community. Nobody knows how to get to the other Santa María, but they suggest I wait until a guy who went into town for a load of sand returns and he might know the way. The sand is for an oven project that some Italian volunteers are working on. I hang out talking to the Italians and playing chess with a Spaniard who has tagged along to help them. The guy with the truckload of sand shows up and doesn't know the way either, so I wait by the roadside for a ride back to town to try again.

Back at the depot, I get directed to the right truck, and after an hour or so of piling on an impossible amount of cargo and passengers, we lurch off down the jungle canyon, something like riding a bucking bronco for a couple of hours as we bounce and swerve through clouds of dust.

Asking around in Santa María, I am directed to the house of one of the autonomous councilmembers. His wife speaks no Spanish, but his kids tell me he's out gathering firewood, and they pull up a chair outside for me to rest. I doze after the long journey, and after a couple of hours a man I´ll call Juan arrives with his burro loaded with firewood. I give him the letter from the Junta and explain my purpose, and he says the next morning I can meet with the autonomous council and work out a plan of visits to the communities. We take turns showering in the little shed where they've rigged up a hose bringing water from the stream, a real treat to wash away the layers of caked mud. Juan's wife kindly brings me a bowl of fried eggs with tortillas and a cup of sweet watery coffee. I eat in the dirt-floor house as chickens run in and out.
Juan is a reserved man in his late 40s with a grave expression. He tells me he came here as a young man, shortly after the ejido was founded in 1975 by a group that petitioned the government for land under the old agrarian reform law. He knows that peasants' constitutional right to land has since ended with the neoliberal "reforms" of the 1990s. He is proud of the Zapatista struggle for land rights, and he tells me of some of the productive projects they have started in the region involving raising sheep and chickens, planting vegetables, etc. He is concerned that education has fallen behind in this municipio, since funding is limited and many communities have been unable to build schools.

Juan shows me to the community house which will be my sleeping quarters, a kind of large meeting hall with a cement floor where I stretch out my sleeping bag. A few other guys come by to chat, asking the usual questions about how far away my country is, how many hours by bus or plane, what crops we grow, and if there's work there for Mexicans. Migration is always a topic of conversation, now that the rural subsistence crisis has fueled a new flow of labor migration from poor Southern states like Chiapas that are not traditional sending states. They tell me that out of about 100 families in this village (which is split between Zapatistas and other organizations), 15 or 20 have someone in the U.S. working at any given time. They are aware of the risks of the passage and exploitative working conditions for migrants, but those who make it and manage to save some money can return in a year or two and put a corrugated tin roof on their house, and maybe buy a calf or two.

Friday morning around 10:00 I am brought to see the council and whoever else they could round up, about 20 guys of varying ages (no women). I explain my purpose and they seem a bit confused, unsure exactly what I want to know, probably not accustomed to being interviewed. Juan had told me they rarely get visitors out here, and I could tell by the way the children gathered to stare that a kaxlán was an unusual sight in these parts. But as I started to ask about the history of the community, the floodgates opened and everyone wanted to join in telling part of the story. They had struggled for their land rights under the agrarian reform in the 1970s. The wealthy landowner had lived in the faraway state capital of Tuxtla and owned many lands and business, including a hotel in Ocosingo. "The late Don Mario," as they still respectfully referred to him, used to pay them 5 pesos a day (US 50 cents) "when he felt like it," and rented them a little corner of bad land to grow their corn in exchange for part of the crop, 10 zontes (a zonte is 400 ears of corn) per hectare--about half the production in a typical year, leaving barely enough for survival. In a bad year when they couldn't make the 10 zontes, they had to work off their debt with extra labor. Now since the Zapatista rebellion they have new collective production projects to supplement incomes in the county, such as sheep and chicken-raising and vegetable plots, financed with start-up money from a Spanish solidarity group. The projects began in 4 of the 14 communities in the county, and each collective splits the proceeds between the county and the community. The county's share goes into a revolving fund to start up similar projects in the other communities until all 14 are eventually covered. It's a constant struggle against animal and plant disease, and they note that the government's agronomists and veterinarians "just sit in their office in the city, they never come out here to the countryside."

At the end of the meeting they all chip in suggestions as to which other communities I should visit. I tell them I'd like to visit a mix of historic ejidos and newly recovered lands, and see some of the productive projects they had mentioned. They come up with a list of 7 villages, disappointed that I won't have time to visit all 14 on this trip, and urge me to come back another time to see the rest.

In the afternoon a compa comes to take me to the next village which I'll call Nopal, a 20-minute truck ride away. He presents me to one of the community leaders I'll call Arturo who takes me to his house, where we sit on the dirt patio on a hillside with a spectacular view of the valley. I am amused to see that they have used one of the plastic campaign posters for PRI presidential candidate Madrazo as a door to their outhouse. Arturo, a friendly man in his 50s, tells me a bit of his family story as chickens and pigs and dogs and turkeys and kids run about. Some of the kids pull makeshift toys on a string, while others are playing a variant of cops & robbers called "migra y pollero," where the Border Patrol agent chases the migrant-smugglers. Arturo's wife plies me with food, first fried eggs and beans, later slices of sugary boiled squash and roasted seeds and oranges.

Nopal is a ranchería, a small independent farm settlement, on land purchased long ago by Arturo's grandfather from the landowner. But by Arturo's generation there was no land left to divide up, so he was left to roam as far as the neighboring state of Tabasco in search of work on lands of the wealthy landowners and ranchers. In the 1970s when the landless peasants of nearby Santa María and two other areas organized to occupy lands and demand titles under the agrarian reform, people in Nopal didn't participate because they were afraid of the army and Public Security forces, who were sent in by the landlord to burn the houses of the uppity peasants. But after a fruitless 9-year struggle to legally solicit their own lands under the agrarian reform, Arturo and the others here joined the clandestine Zapatista movement and they successfully recovered land. Now Arturo has to hike 2-1/2 hours to his milpa, but he is thrilled to have land to work, free from the arbitrary authority of the landlord, and he plans to continue living on this little plot in Nopal where he has carefully planted an array of fruit trees and flowers, where his children attend a Zapatista autonomous school and he has free access to the Zapatista clinic down the road in Santa María.

Arturo is pulling radio operator duty that night, so he insists I sleep on his mattress. He comes back at the crack of dawn and is hard at work splitting firewood, after being up all night on the radio. His wife brings us breakfast of coffee and sweetrolls, then I sit on the patio watching the fog roll through the valley while Arturo goes for a bath. We go downhill for the community meeting, about 70 men and women sitting on opposite sides of the wooden church. Some of my first questions are about the history of the community, and they decide to send for an 82-year-old man who is the only surviving member of the original group of founders. When the elder arrives, villagers kiss his hand or present their infants for him to bless by touching their foreheads. The old man recounts the tale of their virtual slavery in times of the baldío, the traditional free peasant labor for the landlord. A group of 20 of them had gotten together to buy a little piece of marginal land from the landlord, working off their debt through years of hard labor. It occurs to me that they were something like the "Free Coloreds" in the U.S. slavery era. The younger community members pick up the story from there, of their years of unsuccessful attempts to gain adequate land by exercising their legal rights under the agrarian reform, and then the Zapatista clandestine movement and the 1994 rebellion that led to successful land "recovery" when the three rich landlords who owned the entire valley fled. "They were afraid because they knew that their actions had been wrong, that they had a debt with us," one explained.

Afterwards Arturo takes me back to his house for a lemonade. "You know the guy you were talking to with the checkered shirt?," he asks. "He's from the Committee. His struggle name is ___." I suddenly realize I've met a member of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee, the Zapatista rebel leadership, a humble guy living like everyone else in the middle of nowhere.

Another compa comes to get me for the journey to the next community, which I'll call El Pinar. He picks up a horse along the way, and we take turns riding and walking the 2-1/2 hour road up and down the hills, stopping to bathe in a stream along the way.

El Pinar is a tiny ranchería of 14 families, 4 of them Zapatista, who also have recovered land down the road at a place I'll call La Alegría. They are pleased to have a visitor, and the mom brings me a bowl of chicken broth and tortillas with sweet coffee. Children take turns shooing away the chickens from the coffee beans that are spread out on plastic sheets drying in the sun in the front yard. We meet in one of their houses, and I learn that the 4 families are still struggling to maintain a school for the 10 children. They had a volunteer teacher from a nearby county for six months, then one from Spain, then they enrolled two of the older daughters in teacher training in the Zapatista county seat. The young women started teaching while learning, but the schoolhouse with its cardboard roof caved in during recent wind and rainstorms, so the four families are painstakingly saving to buy building materials to start over.

I stay up talking with one of the sons, who joined "The Organization" in 1994 and waxes enthusiastic about the struggle. If we're going to die, he tells me, we might as well fight to try to make things better for our kids. He points out across the expanse of valley where the rich landlord once had his hacienda house, and further down the valley where the landlord had once sent armed men to chop down a cornfield planted by defiant peasants--a traumatic event in local lore that several people have already recounted. Eventually I stretch out my sleeping bag on the floor and crash.

In the morning a radio is blaring a station from Guatemala, advertising courses in English, "the language of success." One of the other sons comes to fetch me after mom has brought me more chicken broth, and we set off for the recovered land settlement I'll call La Alegría. We stop to pick up a mule along the way to carry my backpack, and after an hour's brisk walk through the mountains we arrive.

It's Sunday, December 24 when we arrive, and everyone is in church. Gradually they filter out, the women going home to cook and the men congregating outside the community store to play cards, chat, tend the radio station, rake coffee beans drying in the sun, and herd a small flock of sheep that represent a project started with funds from a Spanish NGO. I hang out talking with the guys, and one of the two who has been assigned to attend visitors takes me back to his house for lunch, beans and tortillas and an unidentifiable stew which I prefer not to ask about. We go back to sit in the soccer field in front of the store, watching the Sunday afternoon slip by. Around 2:00 pm someone blows a few blasts on a cow's horn, and the community starts to assemble. We meet in the church, and the catechist, a middle-aged man, translates. This is recovered land, settled by 42 Zapatista families who came from the surrounding rancherías to take the landlord's ranch and plant corn after the rebellion. They also grow a bit of coffee, though it's barely worth it at the current price of US1.50 a kilo, and they are amazed to hear that U.S. consumers pay ten times that much for coffee. I ask my standard closing question, what are the most important changes in their lives since 1994. Now we're not working for a boss, they explain, so everything we grow with our own effort, we keep. One man reflects thoughtfully, "We see that we're no longer in the days of the mozo (fieldhand), but with unfair trade the way it is, it's like we're not entirely free. And those poor people who are with the government, receiving handouts, it's like they're still slaves."

There's more hanging out and card-playing in the afternoon. I spend the night in the radio room, not exactly sleeping but half-dozing through the crackle of the radio, the snoring of the radio operator, the blaring music and firecrackers from a wedding celebration at the neighboring ejido, the constant barking of every dog in the community, and the roosters starting around 4:00 am.

There doesn't seem to be any special celebration for Christmas, just an extra service in the church on the evening of the 24th, sparsely attended. Later a compa explains that there's no money for a community fiesta. I ask what days are celebrated with fiestas here, and he says just May 3rd, the day when indigenous people go into thge mountains to the source of their streams, with drums and flutes and prayers and offerings for good rains for the coming planting season.

On the morning of the 25th, a young boy is sent to fetch me and bring me back to his house where his mother gives me coffee and hojuelas, sugared frybread. The women hover by the fire while the menfolk are served at the table. The dad doen't speak much Spanish, but he tells me he came from a little rancho where there wasn't enough land to pass on to him and his brothers, so he came here as part of the land recovery. I go back and chat with the guy who is on radio and sheep-tending duty today.He tells me he talked to the next community I'm scheduled to visit, which I'll call Las Palmas, and they're sending someone to guide me "al rato," in awhile, the catch-all time expression that can mean anytime in the course of the day.

We set out around 9:00 am, a muddy hike of about an hour along jungle trails, up and down steep hills with occasional clearings and spectacular views of the valley. My guide scrambles nimbly as I huff and puff, and when we arrive I'm caked with mud and he's neat and clean. Almost everyone in Las Palmas is away in the fields or chopping wood or doing other tasks when I arrive. I bathe with a bucket of water, wash clothes, and talk with a couple of guys who are around the crumbling remains of the old hacienda house, now used as the schoolhouse. They bring me a huge bowl of scrambled eggs with hot sauce. By the afternoon everyone is assembled and we meet in the schol. The education promoter, a teenage kid with a deformed foot, translates. There are 38 families here, and the elders recall the bitter days of the finca when the landlord paid them 30 US cents a day for hard labor from sunup to sundown, and let them plant a little corn on a bit of land in exchange for them planting it over with pasture grass after the harvest.

The school here has been struggling since they started it in 2000, with a series of education promoters from nearby communities lasting a couple of months each. Nobody here has had much education, but they finally recruited a couple of young volunteers from the community who augmented their 3rd-grade education with teacher training, and now they teach first and second grade--but only four days a week, because they have to tend their own cornfield and the community is too poor to offer them any corn.

At the end of the meeting, they stay for an animated discussion of the upcoming celebration of January 1st, anniversary of the Zapatista rebellion. Afterwards a compa invites me home for dinner, more eggs and tortillas. Then I retire to the schoolhouse to write some notes and draw a crowd of fascinated kids, who don't see much writing and have never seen cursive script. It starts raining, which means it's going to be a very mudy early morning trek to the community I'll call Rancho Viejo.


A young compa stops by in the early morning to chat, and he asks about work in the U.S., a constant theme in these parts. He tells me the polleros (smugglers) here charge US$900, which is at the low end of the range I've heard in different parts of the state. The bargain-basement smugglers leave their passengers at the border, while the deluxe trip costing around $2,000 usually includes delivery at a workplace. Of course nobody has that kind of money, and the moneylenders charge 10% monthly interest, which takes a hefty bite out of U.S. earnings. Many from this area have been stopped at the border and sent back, he tells me, but the polleros return the fee after three failed attempts to cross. My guide arrives for the trip to Rancho Viejo, a fairly strenuous hike on muddy hilly trails. He is a thirtyish man who hops agilely along the trails as I struggle with my backpack (Note to self: Pack less!). Upon arriving, someone blows a conch shell to summon the community. The meeting in the church is fairly brief, as it seems the men are anxious to get back to the fields. The most interesting thing I learn is from an informal conversation with the young health promoter, who tells me he went to work for two months in agricultural harvests in the state of Jalisco. He said some of the bosses were mean, following them around and telling them to work harder or they'd be fired. He said the Organization only gives permission around here for people to leave for 2 months for migratory labor (i.e., within Mexico). Those who exceed the limit are punished, he says, either with community service or they are sentenced to "a few days of rest to think about whether or not they really want to be in the struggle."

Two young kids are dispatched to escort me to a community I'll call El Limón, a half hour away. Most of the men are already away in the fields, but the radio operator takes me to the home of one of the leaders who is resting from playing keyboards all night a a fiesta in a nearby village. He shows me to the church to rest, and sends his kids later with a bowl of delicious tamales and a tangerine. Finally everyone assembles in the afternoon after a few blasts of the cow's horn. Just as the conversation begins, a scowling man standing at the edge of where everyone is seated on benches demands to see my letter of authorization from the Junta. I explain that I left it with the autonomous municipal authorities at the county seat, but they can radio back there if there's any doubt. No, he says, the meeting is over, you have to leave. I'm surprised and disappointed, but autonomy means each community makes its own decisions. As I hike back to the previous village to spend the night, I wonder whether the guy who stopped the meeting was one of the mandos militares, leaders of the military part of the movement, whose security concerns sometimes clash with the civilian leadership structures. The folks in the previous village are also a bit surprised to see me, and when I explain what happened they do radio back to the municipal council for verification, then they put me up for the night and I start the journey back to San Cristóbal early the next morning.

Despite the disappointment at the end, it has been a very productive and informative trip, and actually I made such good time that now I'll be able to attend the four-day Zapatista encuentro in the highlands before I have to return to the U.S.