To the men and women who, in different languages and on different paths, believe in a more human future and struggle to obtain it today.
Brothers! There exists on this planet we call Earth and on the continent we call “American” a country which looks like someone bit a huge chunk out of the eastern part and which extends an arm into the Pacific Ocean so the cyclones don’t uproot its past This country is known by its inhabitants and strangers by the name of Mexico. Its history is one of a long fight between its desire to be itself and the longing of others to submit it to a different flag.
This country is ours.
Continually, the wealthy of other lands have tried to rob us of our future.
This is why it is written in the war song that unites us: “If a foreign enemy dares to desecrate our soil with his foot, remember beloved land that in every one of your sons Heaven has given you a soldier.” It is for this, in the past, that we fought.
Outsiders came to conquer us with other flags and other languages. They have come and they have left.
We have remained Mexicans, because we don’t want another name, nor to walk under a different flag than the one where an eagle devours a serpeant on a white background with red and green borders. We have resisted. But we, the first inhabitants of these lands, we the Indigenous people, we have remained, forgotten in a corner, while others became always bigger and stronger; we had only our past to defend us, and we cling to it so we don’t die.
Then came this period of history that seems almost like a mockery, because only one country, the country of money, has been placed above all other flags. They have spoken of “globalization.” In the new order, people serve only one homeland, that of money. The frontiers are disappearing not out of fraternity but through the spilled blood that fattens the wealthy.
The lie has become universal money. In our country the dream of well-being and prosperity of the few has been spun from the nightmare of the many. Corruption and fraud have become the principle export products of our country. We were poor and we dressed up our want as wealth. And the lie was so enormous that we ended up believing it ourselves. We prepared ourselves for big international meetings, and poverty was declared an invention that development would eliminate.
And us? We have been forgotten, we were relegated to a place outside History, we had nothing left but to die, forgotten and humiliated. The suffering of death is nothing beside that of being forgotten. We have discovered that we no longer exist, that those who govern have forgotten us in the euphoria of figures and growth rates. A country which forgets itself like this is a sad country, a country that forgets its past can’t have a future. So we have taken arms and we have entered the villages where we were treated as animals. And we have told the powerful: “We are here!” And we have told the whole country: “We are here!” And we have told the whole world: “We are here!”
See how it works. In order to be seen we have masked our faces; to be given a name we have taken anonymity; to have a future we have gambled our present; and to live, we are dead.
Then came the airplanes, the helicopters, the tanks, the bombs, the bullets and death, and we have returned to our mountains, and the death has followed us there; and many people, from all around, have told us: “Speak!” And the powerful say: “Speak!” And us, we say: “Good, let’s talk!” And we have talked, and we told them what we want, and they didn’t understand. We repeated to them that we want democracy, freedom and justice, and they still didn’t understand, and they looked in their macro-economic plans and their neo-liberal treaties, and they never found these words, and they always told us: “We don’t understand.” They proposed to us a better corner in the museum of history, a more long-term death and a chain of gold to lock up our dignity.
In order to make them understand what we want, we have started to do on our lands what we want We have organized ourselves according to the will of the majority, and we have known what it means to live with democracy, freedom and justice.
For one year, the law of the Zapatistas has governed these mountains. I won’t tell you what you already know: the Zapatistas are us. We who don’t have a face, a name or a past, and who are in majority Indigenous people—but, in recent times, brothers from other lands and other races have joined us. We are all Mexicans. And here is what we did when we governed these lands.
We have reduced the level of alcoholism to zero, and this because the women mobilized to say that drinking serves only to make men beat women and children and act like pigs. They have said no more drinking and no one drinks any more, and the first beneficiaries of this were the children and women, and the losers were the merchants and the government And with the help of nongovernmental organizations, we have launched a health campaign and the population has gained hope for life, even as our confrontation with the government reduced our own hope for life, us the fighters.
AND THE women have seen the results of the laws they have imposed on the men, and a third of our combat forces are now women who have shown their bravery and strength in “convincing” us to accept their rules. They participate equally in the civilian and military leadership, and we find this very good.
And we have also banned the logging of trees and hunting of wild animals, even the ferocious beasts of the government, and banned the consumption and traffic of drugs, and these laws have been respected.
And the rate of infant mortality has become as miniscule as the newborns themselves. And the laws of the Zapatistas have been applied to all, without distinction for social position or level of income. And all the important decisions of our struggle have been taken by referendum or plebiscite.
And we have put an end to prostitution and unemployment has disappeared, and so have the lies. The children have candies and toys.
And we have committed many errors. And we have done what no government, regardless of its political stripes, is capable of doing honestly—knowing how to recognize errors and taking measures to correct them.
And we were there on the path of learning when the tanks, helicopters, planes and thousands of soldiers came, and they told us they were defending national sovereignty.
And we told them it was the Americans who wanted this, not us in Chiapas, and that national sovereignty isn’t defended by treading on the dignity of the Indigenous peoples.
They didn’t listen because the noise of their engines of war had made them deaf, and they had just been sent by the government, this government for which treason is the staircase by which one achieves power while, for us, loyalty is the egalitarian plan we desire for all.
The government brings its legality at the end of a bayonet, while for us our legality was achieved by consensus and reason. We want to convince, while the government wants to conquer. And we say a law that requires arms to have it applied doesn’t merit the name of law but that of despotism, even if it is dressed up in pseudo-legal rags, and the man for whom the law is accompanied by the force of arms is a dictator, even if he claims to be elected by the majority.
And they have chased us from our lands. With the tanks came their law and the law of the Zapatistas was forced to withdraw. And with the tanks of the government returned prostitution, drinking, rape, drugs, destruction, death, corruption, sickness, poverty.
And the people of the government came, and they said that legality was restored on the lands of Chiapas. They came with their bulletproof vests and tanks, but they didn’t stay long because they quickly tired of making their speeches in front of the chickens, pigs, dogs, cows, horses and even a cat that lost its way.
Here is what the government did, and you already know because many journalists saw it and published it This is the legality that reigns now on our lands. This is the war for “legality” and “national sovereignty” which the government waged against the Indigenous peoples of Chiapas. Against other Mexicans, the government has also waged a war, but instead of using tanks and planes, it is with an economic program which is killing them just the same, only more slowly.
We know there have been demonstrations, meetings, letters, poems, songs, films and other things so there will not be war in Chiapas. And we know people have said, “No to war!” in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Britain, Japan, Korea, Canada, the United States, Argentina… and that in other countries, if they have not said it, they have thought it And we have seen that there exist brave people throughout the world and that these people live much closer to Mexico than our own government We would like to tell you, all of you, thank you. To tell you that we would like to offer you a flower, I say a single flower because we don’t have enough for every one of you, but one flower is enough for you to share it and guard a little piece of it and in this way, when you are old, you call tell the children of your country: “I fought for Mexico at the end of the 20th century and I supported the people there. I know only that they wanted what every person wants who has not forgotten he or she is a human being, that is democracy, freedom and justice, and I didn’t know their faces, but their hearts were like mine.”
But I know that with this letter you can make a paper flower that you can put in a buttonhole or in your hair: it will be charming for going out dancing.
On this I leave you because another plane is arriving and I have to put out the light—but not hope. Even if I die, hope will not fade.
I salute you. Do not forget the flower: green stem, white petals, red leaves, and don’t do it on account of the serpeant, the eagle will take care of him.
From the mountains of the south-east of Mexico,
Sub-Commandante Marcos NOTE: The Zapatistas are a mostly indigenous rebel army that launched an uprising in the Mayan-majority Mexican state of Chiapas on Jan. I, 1994. For nearly a year they controlled large parts of Chiapas, but were driven back into their mountain hideouts by a government offensive last winter. This article, written by Zapatista leader Sub-Commandante Marcos, was translated from French by Alex Roslin and reprinted from Taut’journal, a progressive Quebec nationalist newspaper published in Montreal.
