[News] Interview with Subcomandate Marcos

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

March 10, 2006


A CounterPunch Exclusive


Building a Bridge of Struggle Across the Border


An Interview with Subcomandate Marcos

By AURA BOGADO

I conducted this interview with Subcomandante 
Marcos, at The Center for the Documentation of 
Son Jarocho in Veracruz. We talked about the 
Zapatista's Other Campaign, change in Latin 
America, Zapatista women's struggle, and Latinos 
in the United States. Marcos is currently on a 
six-month tour of Mexico to organize and advance 
the Zapatista's Other Campaign. This interview is 
an excerpt from the forthcoming Open Media book, 
The Other Campaign, by Subcomandante Marcos with 
an introduction by Mexican public intellectual, 
Luis Hernández Navarro to be published by 
<http://www.citylights.com/>City Lights Books, 
April 2006. All royalties from the book will 
benefit indigenous media projects in Chiapas, Mexico.

Bogado: Why The Other Campaign now -- for 2005 and 2006?

Marcos: Well, because we, as Zapatistas, had to 
endure a process of preparation--like the 
uprising in 1994, where we prepared for 10 years 
to realize it--we also had to engage in a process 
of preparation for The Other Campaign.

The Other Campaign was actually born in 2001, 
when Mexico's three political parties--the PRI, 
the PAN and the PRD--denied the COCOPA initiative 
for Indigenous cultural rights. So at that point, 
we evaluated that the path with the Mexican 
political class was exhausted--we had to find 
another path. The options were: War, going back 
to fighting; or staying quiet in silence and 
waiting to see what would happen; or doing what we are doing now.

When we decided that we had to prepare for this 
possibility, we anticipated that it would be very 
likely that people who had supported us up until 
that point for Indigenous cultural rights would 
take back their support at the hour we distanced 
ourselves from the political parties, especially 
from the so-called "institutional left": the PRD. 
But at the same time, we had to prepare ourselves 
against a surgical strike, a strike from the 
military or from the police -under any pretext, 
that would attempt to behead the EZLN and without leave it without direction.

For us, the initiative of the Sixth Declaration 
is of the same magnitude, or maybe even greater, 
than our Declaration of War in 1994. We had to be 
prepared to lose our entire leadership. Because, 
according to our method, at the same time that we 
set out to do something, we have to put our 
leaders in front to set the example. We had to be 
ready to lose not only Marcos, but all of our 
known leadership, the ones that will be going out 
to do the political work: the Comandantes, like 
Comandanta Esther, Comandante Tacho, Comandante 
David, Comandante Zebedeo, Comandanta Susana 
...the ailing Comandanta Ramona was also going to 
come out, but unfortunately [she died] .... All 
of us who are more or less publicly known were 
planning to come out, so we had to prepare for 
that, and we had to make plans for the first 
exploratory tour, which has fallen on me, which we are doing now.

Right now we're in Veracruz--Southern Veracruz 
-and in the event that something happens, the 
chain of command will be clear; nothing of what 
we've gained so far will be lost, or we will at 
least be able to defend it as much as possible. 
It could not have been before, and it could not 
have been after, because if we were already 
prepared, there was no need to wait longer to do it.

We specifically choose the electoral period, so 
that it would be clear that we want to do 
something else, and so that people could really 
see and could compare and contrast our political 
proposal--which many people have already joined 
from other organizations and groups--with 
politics from the top. Always, since our birth, 
we've insisted on another way of doing politics. 
Now, we had the chance to do it without arms, but 
without stopping being Zapatistas, that's why we keep the masks on.

Bogado: For people in Latin America, there is 
often a lot of hope in politicians like Lula in 
Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, or Chavez in 
Venezuela. How do you see this change in the so-called left in Latin America?

Marcos: We always turn to look towards the 
bottom, not only in our own country, but in Latin 
America particularly. When Evo Morales presented 
this invitation for his presidential 
inauguration, we said that we were not turning 
our gaze upwards, neither in Bolivia nor in Latin 
America, and in that sense, we don't judge 
governments, whose judgment belongs to the people 
who are there. We look with interest at the 
Bolivian indigenous mobilization, and the 
Ecuadorian one. In fact, they are mentioned in the Sixth Declaration.

The struggle of the Argentine youth, 
fundamentally, this whole piquetero movement, and 
of the youth in general in Argentina, with whom 
we strongly identify with. Also with the movement 
to recover memory, of the pain from what was the 
long night of terror in Argentina, in Uruguay, in 
Chile. And in that sense, we prefer to look at 
the bottom, exchange experiences and understand 
their own assessments of what is happening.

We think, fundamentally, that the future story of 
Latin America, not only of Mexico but for all of 
Latin America, will be constructed from the 
bottom--that the rest of what's happening, in any 
case, are steps. Maybe false steps, maybe firm 
ones, that's yet to be seen. But fundamentally, 
it will be the people from the bottom that will 
be able to take charge of it, organizing 
themselves in another way. The old recipes or the 
old parameters should serve as a reference, yes, 
of what was done, but not as something that 
should be re-adopted to do something new.

Bogado: What can men do, for example, to increase 
the representation of women anywhere in the 
world--from families to cultural centers and beyond?

Marcos: In that respect, well, for us and for all 
organizations and movements, we still have a long 
way to go, because there is still a really big 
distance between the intention of actually being 
better, and really respecting the Other--in this 
case women--and what our realistic practice is.

And I'm not only referring to the excuse of "this 
is how we were educated and there's nothing we 
can do ..." which is often men's excuse--and of 
women too, who obey this type of thinking and 
argue for it one way or another among other women.

Something else that we've seen in our process is 
that at the hour that we [insurgents] arrived in 
the communities and they integrated us as part of 
them, we saw significant, unplanned changes. The 
first change is made internally among the 
relationship between women. The fact that one 
group of indigenous women, whose fundamental 
horizon was the home, getting married quite 
young, having a lot of children, and dedicating 
themselves to the home--could now go to the 
mountains and learn to use arms, be commanders of 
military troops, signified for the communities, 
and for the indigenous women in the communities, 
a very strong revolution. It is there that they 
started to propose that they should participate 
in the assemblies, and in the organizing 
decisions, and started to propose that they 
should hold positions of responsibility. It was not like that before.

But in reality, the pioneers of this 
transformation of the indigenous Zapatista woman 
are a merit of the women insurgents. To become a 
guerrilla in the mountainous conditions is very 
difficult for men, and for the women, it is 
doubly or triply difficult--and I'm not saying 
that they are more fragile or anything like that: 
it's that in addition to the hostile mountainous 
conditions, they also have to be able to put up 
with the hostile conditions of a patriarchal 
system of our own machismo, of our relationships with one another.

[Another difficulty that the women face] is the 
repudiation of their communities which sees it as 
a bad thing for a woman to go out and do 
something else. [After passing their training] a 
group of insurgent women are now the ones who are 
superior, and when they head back down to the 
communities, they now are the ones who show the 
way, lead, and explain the struggle. At first 
this creates a type of revolt, a rebellion among 
the women that starts to take over spaces. Among 
the first rebellions is one that prohibits the 
sale of women into marriage, which used to be an 
indigenous custom, and it gives, in fact (even 
though it's not on paper yet) the women the right to pick their partner.

We also think that while there is an economic 
dependence from women on men, it will be very 
difficult for anything else to develop. Because 
in the end, the women can be very rebellious, and 
very capable and all of that, but if she depends 
on a man economically, she has few possibilities. 
So in that sense, in the communities of the 
Autonomous Rebellious Municipalities, and in the 
Councils of Good Government, the same women that 
are already authorities with responsibilities at 
the municipal level, or on the Councils of Good 
Government, open spaces, projects, and economic 
organization for women in such a way that they 
construct their economic independence, and that 
gives more substance to [the women's] other independence.

Nevertheless, we're still lacking a lot in the 
area of domestic violence from men against women. 
We have gained some in other areas, for example, 
girls who were not going to school are now going 
to school. They weren't going before because they 
were women, and because there weren't any 
schools, and now there are schools and they go, 
regardless of whether they are men or women. And 
women are already in the highest posts of civil 
authority--because in the military authority, in 
the political organizing, we can say that women 
need to be included--but in matters of civil 
society, we [insurgents] don't hold authority, we 
only advise. So in reality, the women in the 
communities now reach the civil authority and 
autonomous municipal posts, which was unthinkable 
for a woman to reach before. [They reach those 
positions] through their own struggle, not through the authority of the EZLN.

Bogado: Do you have any message for [people] in 
the United States, particularly for Chicanos and Latinos?

Marcos: Well, what we've seen while we've been 
passing through as we're getting the word 
out--we've passed through Chiapas, through 
Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco, and 
we've started in Veracruz--in all parts we've 
seen this pain from the people at the 
bottom--[people who have] part of themselves on 
the other side. They feel it's not a product of 
destiny, or of bad luck, nor from a tourist 
interest like the Mexican government says. 
Instead, it is part of this process of suffering 
that is imposed on us. They feel, and we feel it 
also along with them, that one part of them is 
far away and is outside, and that part is our men 
and women of Latino descent, or of Mexican 
descent, or Mexicans that have to cross the border--that are over there.

That's why, since the beginning, when the Sixth 
Declaration was proposed, it was said that the 
Mexicans that were on the other side were not 
part of the Internationals, the Intercontinental; 
instead they are part of The Other Campaign. We 
want to say to you: now that we're going to be in 
Ciudad Juarez first, and then in Tijuana, that 
you join us at the border, and let's have a 
reunion: we have a reunion planned only with 
people from the Other side, one in Juarez, the 
Other in Tijuana, to hear your struggle.

Like we say, the approach of the Sixth is [to 
ask]: Who are we? Where are we? What do we want 
to do? We know there are a lot of people that 
sympathize with the Sixth Declaration and with 
The Other Campaign. And we want to insist to 
them, now through your media outlet, that this is 
their place, this place right next to those of us who are on this side.

That which has provoked pain from the border, 
which signifies death, marginalization, apartheid 
of some kind or another--we have to construct, 
and break that border with a bridge of struggle, 
of dignity. The Other Campaign can be that space. 
No one will speak for them, no one will speak for 
the Mexicanos or Mexicanas or the Chicanos on the 
other side, instead, they will construct their 
own space, defend it, speak for themselves, 
explain the reasons why they are there, the 
difficulties that they face, and what they have 
been able to construct as rebelliousness and 
resistance on that other side--and that we will 
see each other there in Juarez and Tijuana.

Aura Bogado is a news anchor with Free Speech 
Radio. Email: <mailto:kunumi at yahoo.com>kunumi at yahoo.com


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