During our staying in Chiapas we followed a programme of EZLN for visiting a number of Autonomus self organized villages of zapatistas indigenous people….This was maybe the most important experience of this travelling…Most of imformation we found in Chiapas you can found it in internet…But the experience of the happiness and the welcoming of these people to us you can not find it in internet or in any underground blog, or in the magazines…
The children that shouts Zapatista songs, the shy girls with the red traditional mask on the face, the mask of the revolution of Emiliano Zapata in the beginnings of 20th century, still, the same mask, the same revolution…The boys with the black masks, all the village masked, everybody smiling, you feel the smile, bellow of the mask, there is exising a great smile…And you feel the power of solidarity, they fight for our dignity also, they fight for the end of capitalism with us, they fight in our side
…And we stayed there with them, eating boiled black beans and corn tortillias, like they eat for the last 20.000 years, maybe more, the masked people, with the colourfull Mayan cloths, the same people, in the same land, for the last thousands of years…
Most of the times they took us for a long walk in the fields, a silent walk…And in the end of the way always was the house of the “Padron”, the feudalist, and the house was always destroyed completely, and the “padron” was always missing away, and the house was destroyed, destroyed so no one will ever live in there anymore in the future…Never! Never Again!
And then men and women were speaking about their life before 1994…The “padron” had captured for himself the best land, and the tribal people was always forced to stay up on the mountain, with no water and no land to cultivate…The feudalist had pistoleros to protect him and his family, and the tribal people was obliged to work from early in the morning until the end of the day…And they were payed 5 pessos per week (0,30 euro per week)…They made all kind of works for him and if they tried to escape they put them in trial, and if they asked to pass through the land with their animals they were killing their animals, and if they were trying to take clean water they were shooting them, and if the padron liked a girl from the village was taking her as a house maid and he was raping her, and if he liked to use the tribal people for fun he was making fun of them, humliating them, for their language, their cloths, their faces…like animals, like slaves, all their life were working for the “padron”, like slaves of the feudalist, the feudalist, the same like any European colonialist in any place of Earth…And they had very bad life, and there was no government, no law, no politician, no policeman, no judge to protect them…Cause all governments, all laws, all police, all judgements were designed by the rich to protect their interests…Like everywhere in the Planet…Like in Chiapas…
Until the arising of the organization, until the moment that appeared these ghosts in the villages and started to speak to each one of them in the begginning, and they were looking like the ghosts of their fathers and their grandmothers….Until the moment all the village becomes Zapatista no one speak openly about the organization…And then all village came to the organization, and the girls and the boys left to the mountain to start the millitary exercises, and all the village was happy, and preparing, and then the next village, and the next village, for ten years preparing, and dreaming, preparing silently and dreaming….Until one day the women of the villages appeared and said “That’s Enough! Now is the time!”…And the time was 1st Jenuary of 1994…And the Thunder of Zapatista indigenious people stroke in the sky of Chiapas….and the feudals were not feudals anymore, and the slaves were not slaves anymore…and the ghosts of the grandfathers, and the ghosts of the grandmothers were happy, and free…and the children were happy and healthy and they had all together the land, the water, the sky, the sun and they shared their future, they fight, they resist, they defend their dignity, they defend their Autonomia…
When you hear a masked old woman say you all these, infront of the demolished house of the feudalist…you understand that information doesn’t comes from the computer, comes from the sky, the water, the heart of the people…Revolutionary dreams and actions are not information…There are our life!…Our days and nights, our travellings and our fights, our moments and our years…This is not information…This is your Life!
…and then spoke an old man for second time…and he said:
“…Now for the most of us that we made this fight and we took our land and our life back is becoming more difficult…We become old…We can not climb fast on the mounatins and our power slowly slowly going…But here are our children…strong, healthy, happy and ready to fight better than us…And I see those children, and I feel happy…and I think about my father, and my mother, all this difficult life they had…And I said to myself…It was good that we made this fight…And all our ancestors are happy for us…And our children will have all life in their hands…And they will never surrender…For the government to take back our land again, he has to kill all of us…But they will never succeed to do it!…Cause now they have to kill you also…All you, friends, that you came from the far away lands…And tha’t why I am happy….Cause I know that our children will have all life and all the future in their own hands…”
