[News] EZLN Communique:A penguin in the Selva Lacandona, Pt 2, Jul 23
News at freedomarchives.org
News at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jul 26 11:59:03 EDT 2005
Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN
************************************
Translated by irlandesa
A Penguin in the Selva Lacandona II/II
(The zapatista is just a little house, perhaps the smallest, on a street
called "Mexico," in a barrio called "Latin America," in a city called the
"World.")
I was speaking to you about the critiques of the points made by the Sixth
Declaration of the Selva Lacandona concerning Mexico, Latin America and the
World. Well, in response, allow me some questions:
Concerning there's no place for you in this world
What happens, for example, when, more than a decade ago, a little girl (let's
say between 4 and 6 years old), indigenous and Mexican, sees her father, her
brothers, her uncles, her cousins or her neighbors, taking up arms, a ton of
pozol and a number of tostadas and "going off to war?" What happens when some
of them don't return?
What happens when that little girl grows up, and, instead of going for
firewood, she goes to school, and she learns to read and write with the
history of
her people's struggle?
What happens when that girl reaches youth, after 12 years of seeing, hearing
and speaking with Mexicans, Basques, North Americans, Italians, Spaniards,
Catalans, French persons, Dutch, German, Swiss, British, Finnish, Danish,
Swedish, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Australian, Filipino, Korean, Argentinean,
Chilean, Canadian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Guatemalan, Puerto Rican,
Dominican, Uruguayan, Brazilian, Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Honduran,
Bolivian and
etceteras, and learns of what their countries, their struggles, their worlds
are like?
What happens when she sees those men and women sharing deprivations, work,
anguish and joys with her community?
What happens with that girl-then-adolescent-then-young-woman after having
seen and heard "the civil societies" for 12 years, bringing not only projects,
but also histories and experiences from diverse parts of Mexico and the World?
What happens when she sees and listens to the electrical workers, working with
Italians and Mexicans in the installation of a turbine in order to provide a
community with light? What happens when she meets with young university
students at the height of the 1999-2000 strike? What happens when she
discovers
that there are not just men and women in the world, but that there are many
paths and ways of attraction and love. What happens when she sees young
students
at the sit-in at Amador Herna'ndez? What happens when she hears what
campesinos from other parts of Mexico have said? What happens when they
tell her of
Acteal and the displaced in Los Altos of Chiapas? What happens when she learns
of the accords and advances of the peoples and organizations of the National
Indigenous Congress? What happens when she finds out that the political
parties ignored the death of her people and decided to reject the San Andre's
Accords? What happens when they recount to her that the PRD paramilitaries
attacked
a zapatista march - peaceful and for the purpose of carrying water to other
indigenous - and left several compa~eros with bullet wounds on just April 10?
What happens when she sees federal soldiers passing by every day with their war
tanks, their artillery vehicles, their rifles pointing at her house? What
happens when someone tells her that in a place called Ciudad Jua'rez, young
women
like her are being kidnapped, raped and murdered, and the authorities are not
seeing that justice is done?
What happens when she listens to her brothers and sisters, to her parents, to
her relatives, talking about when they went to the March of the 1111 in 1997,
to the Consulta of 5000 in 1999, when they talk about what they saw and
heard, about the families who welcomed them, about what they are like as
citizens,
how they also are fighting, how they won't give up either.
What happens when she sees, for example, Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Gonza'lez
Casanova, Adolfo Gilly, Alain Touraine, Neil Harvey, in mud up to their knees,
meeting together in a hut in La Realidad, talking about neoliberalism. What
happens when she listens to Daniel Viglietti singing "A desalambrar" in a
community? What happens when she sees the play, "Zorro el zapato" which
the French
children from Tameratong presented on zapatista lands? What happens when she
sees and hears Jose' Saramago talking, talking to her? What happens when she
hears Oscar Cha'vez singing in Tzotzil? What happens when she hears a Mapuche
indigenous recounting her experience of struggle and resistance in a country
called Chile? What happens she goes to a meeting where someone who says he
is a
"piquetero" recounts how they are organizing and resisting in a country called
Argentina? What happens when she hears an indigenous from Colombia saying
that, in the midst of guerillas, paramilitaries, soldiers and US military
advisors, her compa~eros are trying to build themselves as the indigenous
they are?
What happens when she hears the "citizen musicians" playing that very otherly
music called "rock" in a camp for the displaced? What happens when she knows
that an Italian football team called Internazionale de Milan are financially
helping the wounded and displaced of Zinacanta'n? What happens when she sees a
group of North American, German and British men and women arrive with
electronic appliances, and she listens to them talking about what they are
doing in
their countries in order to do away with injustice, while teaching her to
assemble and use those appliances, and later she's in front of the microphone
saying: "You are listening to Radio Insurgente, the voice of those without
voice,
broadcasting from the mountains of the Mexican southeast, and we are going to
begin with a nice cumbia called 'La Suegra', and we're advising the health
workers that they should go to the Caracol to pick up the vaccine." What
happens
when she hears at the Good Government Junta that that Catalan came from very
far away to personally deliver what a solidarity committee put together for aid
for the resistance? What happens when she sees a North American coming and
going with the coffee, honey and crafts (and the product of their sale), which
are made in the zapatista cooperatives, when she sees that they haven't
commanded any special attention despite the fact that they've been making
them for
years without anyone paying them any notice? What happens when she sees the
Greeks bringing money for school materials and then working along with the
zapatista indigenous in the construction? What happens when she sees a
frentista
arriving at the Caracol and delivering a bus full of medicines, medical
equipment, hospital beds and even uniforms and shoes for the health
workers, while
other young people from the FZLN are dividing up in order to help in the
community clinics? What happens when she sees the people from "Schools for
Chiapas"
arriving, departing and leaving, in effect, a school, a school bus, pencils,
notebooks, chalkboards? What happens when she sees Hindus, Koreans, Japanese,
Australians, Slovenes and Iranians arriving at the language school in Oventik
(which a "citizen" compa~ero has kept functioning under heroic circumstances)?
What happens when she sees a person arriving in order to deliver a book to
the Security Committee with translations of the EZLN communique's in Arab or
Japanese or Kurd and the royalties from their sales?
What happens when, for example, a girl grows up and reaches youth in the
zapatista resistance over 12 years in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast?
I'm asking because, for example, there are two insurgentas doing sentry duty
here for the Red Alert in the EZLN headquarters. They are, as the compas say,
"one hundred percent indigenous and one hundred percent Mexican." One is 18
and the other 16. Or, in other words, in 1994, the one was 6 and the other
was 4. There are dozens like them in our mountain positions, hundreds in the
militias, thousands in organizational and community positions, tens of
thousands
in the zapatista communities. The immediate commander of the two doing
sentry duty is an insurgent lieutenant, indigenous, 22 years old, in other
words,
10 years old in 1994. The position is under the command of an insurgent
captain, also indigenous, who, as it should be, likes literature very much
and is 24
years old, that is, 12 at the beginning of the uprising. And there are men
and women all over these lands who passed from childhood to youth to maturity
in the zapatista resistance.
Then I ask: What am I saying to you? That the world is wide and far away?
That only what happens to us is important? That what happens in other parts
of Mexico, of Latin America and of the world doesn't interest us, that we
shouldn't involve ourselves in the national or international, and that we
should
shut ourselves away (and deceive ourselves), thinking that we can achieve, by
ourselves, what our relatives died for? That we shouldn't pay any attention to
all the signs which are telling us that the only was we can survive is by
doing what we are going to do? That we should refuse the listening and
words of
those who have never denied us either one? That we should respect and help
those same politicians who denied us a dignified resolution of the war? That,
before coming out, we have to pass a test in order to see whether what we have
constructed here over the last 12 years of war is of sufficient merit?
We told you in the Sixth Declaration that new generations have entered into
the struggle. And they are not only new, they also have other experiences,
other histories. We did not tell you in the Sixth, but I'm telling you now:
they are better than us, the ones who started the EZLN and began the uprising.
They see further, their step is more firm, they are more open, they are better
prepared, they are more intelligent, more determined, more aware.
What the Sixth presents is not an "imported" product, written by a group of
wise men in a sterile laboratory and then introduced into a social group. The
Sixth comes out of what we are now and of where we are. That is why those
first parts appeared, because what we are proposing cannot be understood
without
understanding what our experience and organization was before, that is, our
history. And when I say "our history" I am not speaking just of the EZLN, I am
also including all those men and women of Mexico, of Latin America and of the
World who have been with us...even if we have not seen them and they are in
their worlds, their struggles, their experiences, their histories.
The zapatista struggle is a little hut, one more little house, perhaps the
most humble and simplest among those which are being raised, with identical or
greater hardships and efforts, in this street which is called "Mexico." We who
reside in this little house identify with the band which peoples the entire
barrio of below which is called "Latin America," and we hope to contribute
something to making the great City which is called the "World"
habitable. If this
is bad, attribute it to all those men and women who, struggling in their
houses, barrios, cities - in their worlds - took a place among us. Not
above, not
below, but with us.
A Penguin in the Selva Lacandona
Alright, a promise is a promise. At the beginning of this document I told
you I was going to tell you about the penguin that's here, in the mountains of
the Mexican Southeast, so here goes.
It took place in one of the insurgent barracks, a little more than a month
ago, just before the Red Alert. I was on my way, heading towards the position
that was to be the headquarters of the Comandancia General of the EZLN. I had
to pick the insurgentes and insurgentas up there, the ones who were going to
make up my unit during the Red Alert. The commander of the barracks, a
Lieutenant Colonel Insurgente, was finishing up the dismantling of the camp
and was
making arrangements for moving the impedimenta. In order to lighten the burden
of the support bases who were providing supplies for the insurgent troops,
the soldiers in this unit had developed a few subsistence measures of their
own:
a vegetable garden and a farm. They decided they would take as many of the
vegetables as they could, and the rest would be left to the hand of god. As
for the chickens, hens and roosters, the alternative was to eat them or leave
them. "Better we eat them than the federales," the men and women (most of them
young people under the age of 20) who were maintaining that position decided,
not without reason. One by one, the animals ended up in the pot and, from
there to the soldiers' soup dishes. There weren't very many animals either, so
in a few days the poultry population had been reduced to two or three
specimens.
When only one remained, on the precise day of departure, what happened
happened...
The last chicken began walking upright, perhaps trying to be mistaken for one
of us and to pass unnoticed with that posture. I don't know much about
zoology, but it does not appear that the anatomical makeup of chickens is
made for
walking upright, so, with the swaying produced by the effort of keeping itself
upright, the chicken was teetering back and forth, without being able to come
up with a precise course. It was then that someone said "it looks like a
penguin." The incident provoked laughter which resulted in sympathy. The
chicken did, it's true, look like a penguin, it was only missing the white
bib. The
fact is that the jokes ended up preventing the "penguin" from meeting the
same fate as its compa~eros from the farm.
The hour of departure arrived, and, while checking to be sure nothing was
left, they realized that the "penguin" was still there, swaying from one
side to
another, but not returning to its natural position. "Let's take it," I said,
and everyone looked at me to see if I were joking or serious. It was the
insurgenta To~ita who offered to take it. It began raining, and she put it
in her
lap, under the heavy plastic cape which To~ita wore to protect her weapon and
her rucksack from the water. We began the march in the rain.
The penguin arrived at the EZLN Headquarters and quickly adapted to the
routines of the insurgent Red Alert. It often joined (never losing the
posture of
a penguin) the insurgents and insurgentas at cell time, the hour of political
study. The theme during those days was the 13 zapatista demands, and the
compa~eros summed it up under the title "Why We Are Struggling." Well,
you're not
going to believe me, but when I went to the cell meeting, under the pretext
of looking for hot coffee, I saw that it was the penguin who was paying the
most attention. And, also, from time to time, it would peck at someone who was
sleeping in the middle of the political talk, as if chiding him to pay
attention.
There are no other animals in the barracks...I mean except for the snakes,
the "chibo" tarantulas, two field rats, the crickets, ants, an indeterminate
(but very large) number of mosquitoes and a cojolito who came to sing, probably
because it felt called by the music - cumbias, rancheras, corridos, songs of
love, of spite - which emanated from the small radio which is used to hear the
morning news by Pascal Beltra'n on Antena Radio and then "Plaza Pu'blica" by
Miguel A'ngel Granados Chapa on Radio UNAM.
Well, I told you there weren't any other animals, so it would seem normal
that "penguin" would think that we were its kind and tend to behave as if
it were
one more of us. We hadn't realized how far it had gone until one afternoon
when it refused to eat in the corner it had been assigned, and it went over to
the wooden table. Penguin made a racket, more chicken-like than penguin-like,
until we understood that it wanted to eat with us. You should understand
that Penguin's new identity prevented the former chicken from flying the
minimum
necessary for getting up on the bench, and so it was insurgenta Erika who
lifted it up and let it eat from her plate.
The insurgent captain in charge had told me that the chicken, I mean penguin,
did not like to be alone at night, perhaps because it feared that the possums
might confuse it with a chicken, and it protested until someone took it to
their tarp. It wasn't very long before Erika and To~ita made it a white
bib out
of fabric (they wanted to paint it [Penguin]with lime or house paint, but I
managed to dissuade them...I think), so that there would be no doubt that it
was a penguin, and no one would confuse it with a chicken.
You may be thinking that I am, or we are, delirious, but what I'm telling you
is true. Meanwhile, Penguin has become part of the Comandancia General of
the Ezeta, and perhaps those of you who come to the preparatory meetings
for the
"Other Campaign" might see it with your own eyes. It could also be expected
that Penguin might be the mascot for the EZLN football team when it faces,
soon, the Milan Internazionale. Someone might then perhaps take a picture
for a
souvenir. Perhaps, after a while and looking at the image, a girl or a boy
might ask: "Mama, and who are those next to the Penguin?" (sigh)
Do you know what? It occurs to me now that we are like Penguin, trying very
hard to be erect and to make ourselves a place in Mexico, in Latin America, in
the World. Just as the trip we are about to take is not in our anatomy, we
shall certainly go about swaying, unsteady and stupidly, provoking laughter and
jokes. Although perhaps, also like Penguin, we might provoke some sympathy,
and someone might, generously, protect us and help us, walking with us, to do
what every man, woman or penguin should do, that is, to always try to be
better in the only way possible, by struggling.
Vale. Salud and an embrace from Penguin (?)
>From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, July of 2005
--part1_64.599e36ff.3016df3e_boundary
Content-Type: text/html; charset"ISO-8859-1"
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Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN
************************************
Translated by irlandesa
A Penguin in the Selva Lacandona II/II
(The zapatista is just a little house, perhaps the smallest, on a street
called "Mexico," in a barrio called "Latin America," in a city called the
"World.")
I was speaking to you about the critiques of the points made by the Sixth
Declaration of the Selva Lacandona concerning Mexico, Latin America and the
World. Well, in response, allow me some questions:
Concerning there's no place for you in this world
What happens, for example, when, more than a decade ago, a little girl
(let's say between 4 and 6 years old), indigenous and Mexican, sees her
father, her brothers, her uncles, her cousins or her neighbors, taking up
arms, a ton of pozol and a number of tostadas and "going off to war?" What
happens when some of them don't return?
What happens when that little girl grows up, and, instead of going for
firewood, she goes to school, and she learns to read and write with the
history of her people's struggle?
What happens when that girl reaches youth, after 12 years of seeing,
hearing and speaking with Mexicans, Basques, North Americans, Italians,
Spaniards, Catalans, French persons, Dutch, German, Swiss, British,
Finnish, Danish, Swedish, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Australian, Filipino,
Korean, Argentinean, Chilean, Canadian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Ecuadorian,
Guatemalan, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Uruguayan, Brazilian, Cuban, Haitian,
Nicaraguan, Honduran, Bolivian and etceteras, and learns of what their
countries, their struggles, their worlds are like?
What happens when she sees those men and women sharing deprivations,
work, anguish and joys with her community?
What happens with that girl-then-adolescent-then-young-woman after having
seen and heard "the civil societies" for 12 years, bringing not only
projects, but also histories and experiences from diverse parts of Mexico
and the World? What happens when she sees and listens to the electrical
workers, working with Italians and Mexicans in the installation of a
turbine in order to provide a community with light? What happens when she
meets with young university students at the height of the 1999-2000
strike? What happens when she discovers that there are not just men and
women in the world, but that there are many paths and ways of attraction
and love. What happens when she sees young students at the sit-in at
Amador Herna'ndez? What happens when she hears what campesinos from other
parts of Mexico have said? What happens when they tell her of Acteal and
the displaced in Los Altos of Chiapas? What happens when she learns of the
accords and advances of the peoples and organ!
izations of the National Indigenous Congress? What happens when she
finds out that the political parties ignored the death of her people and
decided to reject the San Andre's Accords? What happens when they recount
to her that the PRD paramilitaries attacked a zapatista march - peaceful
and for the purpose of carrying water to other indigenous - and left
several compa~eros with bullet wounds on just April 10? What happens when
she sees federal soldiers passing by every day with their war tanks, their
artillery vehicles, their rifles pointing at her house? What happens when
someone tells her that in a place called Ciudad Jua'rez, young women like
her are being kidnapped, raped and murdered, and the authorities are not
seeing that justice is done?
What happens when she listens to her brothers and sisters, to her
parents, to her relatives, talking about when they went to the March of the
1111 in 1997, to the Consulta of 5000 in 1999, when they talk about what
they saw and heard, about the families who welcomed them, about what they
are like as citizens, how they also are fighting, how they won't give up
either.
What happens when she sees, for example, Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Gonza'lez
Casanova, Adolfo Gilly, Alain Touraine, Neil Harvey, in mud up to their
knees, meeting together in a hut in La Realidad, talking about
neoliberalism. What happens when she listens to Daniel Viglietti singing
"A desalambrar" in a community? What happens when she sees the play,
"Zorro el zapato" which the French children from Tameratong presented on
zapatista lands? What happens when she sees and hears Jose' Saramago
talking, talking to her? What happens when she hears Oscar Cha'vez singing
in Tzotzil? What happens when she hears a Mapuche indigenous recounting
her experience of struggle and resistance in a country called Chile? What
happens she goes to a meeting where someone who says he is a "piquetero"
recounts how they are organizing and resisting in a country called
Argentina? What happens when she hears an indigenous from Colombia saying
that, in the midst of guerillas, paramilitaries, sold!
iers and US military advisors, her compa~eros are trying to build
themselves as the indigenous they are? What happens when she hears the
"citizen musicians" playing that very otherly music called "rock" in a camp
for the displaced? What happens when she knows that an Italian football
team called Internazionale de Milan are financially helping the wounded and
displaced of Zinacanta'n? What happens when she sees a group of North
American, German and British men and women arrive with electronic
appliances, and she listens to them talking about what they are doing in
their countries in order to do away with injustice, while teaching her to
assemble and use those appliances, and later she's in front of the
microphone saying: "You are listening to Radio Insurgente, the voice of
those without voice, broadcasting from the mountains of the Mexican
southeast, and we are going to begin with a nice cumbia called 'La Suegra',
and we're advising the health workers that they should go!
to the Caracol to pick up the vaccine." What happens when she hears
at the Good Government Junta that that Catalan came from very far away to
personally deliver what a solidarity committee put together for aid for the
resistance? What happens when she sees a North American coming and going
with the coffee, honey and crafts (and the product of their sale), which
are made in the zapatista cooperatives, when she sees that they haven't
commanded any special attention despite the fact that they've been making
them for years without anyone paying them any notice? What happens when
she sees the Greeks bringing money for school materials and then working
along with the zapatista indigenous in the construction? What happens when
she sees a frentista arriving at the Caracol and delivering a bus full of
medicines, medical equipment, hospital beds and even uniforms and shoes for
the health workers, while other young people from the FZLN are dividing up
in order to help in the community clinics? What happens when she sees the
people from "Schools for!
Chiapas" arriving, departing and leaving, in effect, a school, a school
bus, pencils, notebooks, chalkboards? What happens when she sees Hindus,
Koreans, Japanese, Australians, Slovenes and Iranians arriving at the
language school in Oventik (which a "citizen" compa~ero has kept
functioning under heroic circumstances)? What happens when she sees a
person arriving in order to deliver a book to the Security Committee with
translations of the EZLN communique's in Arab or Japanese or Kurd and the
royalties from their sales?
What happens when, for example, a girl grows up and reaches youth in the
zapatista resistance over 12 years in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast?
I'm asking because, for example, there are two insurgentas doing sentry
duty here for the Red Alert in the EZLN headquarters. They are, as the
compas say, "one hundred percent indigenous and one hundred percent
Mexican." One is 18 and the other 16. Or, in other words, in 1994, the
one was 6 and the other was 4. There are dozens like them in our mountain
positions, hundreds in the militias, thousands in organizational and
community positions, tens of thousands in the zapatista communities. The
immediate commander of the two doing sentry duty is an insurgent
lieutenant, indigenous, 22 years old, in other words, 10 years old in
1994. The position is under the command of an insurgent captain, also
indigenous, who, as it should be, likes literature very much and is 24
years old, that is, 12 at the beginning of the uprising. And there are men
and women all over these lands who passed from childhood to youth to
maturity in the zapatista resistance.
Then I ask: What am I saying to you? That the world is wide and far
away? That only what happens to us is important? That what happens in
other parts of Mexico, of Latin America and of the world doesn't interest
us, that we shouldn't involve ourselves in the national or international,
and that we should shut ourselves away (and deceive ourselves), thinking
that we can achieve, by ourselves, what our relatives died for? That we
shouldn't pay any attention to all the signs which are telling us that the
only was we can survive is by doing what we are going to do? That we
should refuse the listening and words of those who have never denied us
either one? That we should respect and help those same politicians who
denied us a dignified resolution of the war? That, before coming out, we
have to pass a test in order to see whether what we have constructed here
over the last 12 years of war is of sufficient merit?
We told you in the Sixth Declaration that new generations have entered
into the struggle. And they are not only new, they also have other
experiences, other histories. We did not tell you in the Sixth, but I'm
telling you now: they are better than us, the ones who started the EZLN
and began the uprising. They see further, their step is more firm, they
are more open, they are better prepared, they are more intelligent, more
determined, more aware.
What the Sixth presents is not an "imported" product, written by a group
of wise men in a sterile laboratory and then introduced into a social
group. The Sixth comes out of what we are now and of where we are. That
is why those first parts appeared, because what we are proposing cannot be
understood without understanding what our experience and organization was
before, that is, our history. And when I say "our history" I am not
speaking just of the EZLN, I am also including all those men and women of
Mexico, of Latin America and of the World who have been with us...even if
we have not seen them and they are in their worlds, their struggles, their
experiences, their histories.
The zapatista struggle is a little hut, one more little house, perhaps
the most humble and simplest among those which are being raised, with
identical or greater hardships and efforts, in this street which is called
"Mexico." We who reside in this little house identify with the band which
peoples the entire barrio of below which is called "Latin America," and we
hope to contribute something to making the great City which is called the
"World" habitable. If this is bad, attribute it to all those men and women
who, struggling in their houses, barrios, cities - in their worlds - took a
place among us. Not above, not below, but with us.
A Penguin in the Selva Lacandona
Alright, a promise is a promise. At the beginning of this document I
told you I was going to tell you about the penguin that's here, in the
mountains of the Mexican Southeast, so here goes.
It took place in one of the insurgent barracks, a little more than a
month ago, just before the Red Alert. I was on my way, heading towards the
position that was to be the headquarters of the Comandancia General of the
EZLN. I had to pick the insurgentes and insurgentas up there, the ones who
were going to make up my unit during the Red Alert. The commander of the
barracks, a Lieutenant Colonel Insurgente, was finishing up the dismantling
of the camp and was making arrangements for moving the impedimenta. In
order to lighten the burden of the support bases who were providing
supplies for the insurgent troops, the soldiers in this unit had developed
a few subsistence measures of their own: a vegetable garden and a
farm. They decided they would take as many of the vegetables as they
could, and the rest would be left to the hand of god. As for the chickens,
hens and roosters, the alternative was to eat them or leave them. "Better
we eat them than the federales," the me!
n and women (most of them young people under the age of 20) who were
maintaining that position decided, not without reason. One by one, the
animals ended up in the pot and, from there to the soldiers' soup
dishes. There weren't very many animals either, so in a few days the
poultry population had been reduced to two or three specimens.
When only one remained, on the precise day of departure, what happened
happened...
The last chicken began walking upright, perhaps trying to be mistaken for
one of us and to pass unnoticed with that posture. I don't know much about
zoology, but it does not appear that the anatomical makeup of chickens is
made for walking upright, so, with the swaying produced by the effort of
keeping itself upright, the chicken was teetering back and forth, without
being able to come up with a precise course. It was then that someone said
"it looks like a penguin." The incident provoked laughter which resulted
in sympathy. The chicken did, it's true, look like a penguin, it was only
missing the white bib. The fact is that the jokes ended up preventing the
"penguin" from meeting the same fate as its compa~eros from the farm.
The hour of departure arrived, and, while checking to be sure nothing was
left, they realized that the "penguin" was still there, swaying from one
side to another, but not returning to its natural position. "Let's take
it," I said, and everyone looked at me to see if I were joking or
serious. It was the insurgenta To~ita who offered to take it. It began
raining, and she put it in her lap, under the heavy plastic cape which
To~ita wore to protect her weapon and her rucksack from the water. We
began the march in the rain.
The penguin arrived at the EZLN Headquarters and quickly adapted to the
routines of the insurgent Red Alert. It often joined (never losing the
posture of a penguin) the insurgents and insurgentas at cell time, the hour
of political study. The theme during those days was the 13 zapatista
demands, and the compa~eros summed it up under the title "Why We Are
Struggling." Well, you're not going to believe me, but when I went to the
cell meeting, under the pretext of looking for hot coffee, I saw that it
was the penguin who was paying the most attention. And, also, from time to
time, it would peck at someone who was sleeping in the middle of the
political talk, as if chiding him to pay attention.
There are no other animals in the barracks...I mean except for the
snakes, the "chibo" tarantulas, two field rats, the crickets, ants, an
indeterminate (but very large) number of mosquitoes and a cojolito who came
to sing, probably because it felt called by the music - cumbias, rancheras,
corridos, songs of love, of spite - which emanated from the small radio
which is used to hear the morning news by Pascal Beltra'n on Antena Radio
and then "Plaza Pu'blica" by Miguel A'ngel Granados Chapa on Radio UNAM.
Well, I told you there weren't any other animals, so it would seem normal
that "penguin" would think that we were its kind and tend to behave as if
it were one more of us. We hadn't realized how far it had gone until one
afternoon when it refused to eat in the corner it had been assigned, and it
went over to the wooden table. Penguin made a racket, more chicken-like
than penguin-like, until we understood that it wanted to eat with us. You
should understand that Penguin's new identity prevented the former chicken
from flying the minimum necessary for getting up on the bench, and so it
was insurgenta Erika who lifted it up and let it eat from her plate.
The insurgent captain in charge had told me that the chicken, I mean
penguin, did not like to be alone at night, perhaps because it feared that
the possums might confuse it with a chicken, and it protested until someone
took it to their tarp. It wasn't very long before Erika and To~ita made it
a white bib out of fabric (they wanted to paint it [Penguin]with lime or
house paint, but I managed to dissuade them...I think), so that there would
be no doubt that it was a penguin, and no one would confuse it with a chicken.
You may be thinking that I am, or we are, delirious, but what I'm telling
you is true. Meanwhile, Penguin has become part of the Comandancia General
of the Ezeta, and perhaps those of you who come to the preparatory meetings
for the "Other Campaign" might see it with your own eyes. It could also be
expected that Penguin might be the mascot for the EZLN football team when
it faces, soon, the Milan Internazionale. Someone might then perhaps take
a picture for a souvenir. Perhaps, after a while and looking at the image,
a girl or a boy might ask: "Mama, and who are those next to the
Penguin?" (sigh)
Do you know what? It occurs to me now that we are like Penguin, trying
very hard to be erect and to make ourselves a place in Mexico, in Latin
America, in the World. Just as the trip we are about to take is not in our
anatomy, we shall certainly go about swaying, unsteady and stupidly,
provoking laughter and jokes. Although perhaps, also like Penguin, we
might provoke some sympathy, and someone might, generously, protect us and
help us, walking with us, to do what every man, woman or penguin should do,
that is, to always try to be better in the only way possible, by struggling.
Vale. Salud and an embrace from Penguin (?)
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, July of 2005
The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org
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