
Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano in CIDECI.
Good morning, afternoon, evening, and early morning again
Perhaps someone remembers that the late Sup Marcos insisted that the capitalist system could not be understood without the concept of war. Of course, supposing that it is a concept. He said that war was the motor that had first permitted the expansion of capitalism and later its consolidation as a global system, besides resorting to it to face its recurrent and profound crises.
Oh, I know, what else could you expect from a soldier. But I must point out, as a way of vindication, that he did not limit war to military war. Perhaps a re-reading of the correspondence that he maintained with Don Luis Villoro Toranzo in 2010 and that was made public at the beginning of 2011 could help us understand that. In the first of those public missives, he examines minutely the apparent inefficiency of the so-called “war against drug trafficking” initiated by the fan of warlike video games, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. And I say “apparent inefficiency” because, in effect, in view of the results, it was and is inefficient for combatting organized crime, but was effective for sending the military to govern de facto in several regions of the country called “Mexico.”
I bring it up because, unlike the deceased, in my opinion, capitalism can be studied as a crime.
Bringing it up in this way would demand scientific knowledge of matters that could appear distant from what is traditionally known as “social sciences.”
In the end, catalogue to your liking this theoretical deviation, perhaps the product of an unfinished correspondence course of a private detective, in that distant epoch in which the mail did not refer to electronic accounts and nicknames, and that when you put the address, you put the zip code and not the no la I.P. or protocol of the Internet; an epoch in which you could study, also by correspondence, anything from a locksmith course to one of pilot aviator, passing by, of course, “how to have a body like Charles Atlas without going to the gym and in just a few weeks,” which I didn’t need to take because my beautiful and well-shaped legs are evident (arrrrrroz con leche).
Finally, put me in the archive of any of the “isms” that may be on hand in the social networks, and avoid concluding that the social sciences will remain incomplete while they don’t include criminology among their tools, since crime is also about, forensic science.
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But I continue talking about a crime, a crime that is explained from different perspectives.
Take a recent example: the earthquakes and the consequent misfortunes.
We could ask about the construction conditions. We suppose that there was and there is a scientific study of the subsoil, calculations of the resistance of materials, and things like that. Those who have made science their vocation, profession and life, can tell us that this is the case; that the sciences can give us the elements for avoiding or at least reducing the risk that buildings collapse.
In other words, in a seismic zone and with a history of earthquakes, one would hope that buildings would be constructed talking that into account. I mean, it would not be anything serious if a building were constructed and afterwards they prayed that no earthquakes occurred that would bring it down.
I don’t know, perhaps the scientists could answer the key question, which is not, of course, why there are earthquakes, but why people die under the shambles of buildings that should be built to resist earthquakes.
But, according to the analysis in vogue, it all depends.
So, as the neophilosopher of science said, the “intellectually formidable” (according to the press that he made his), the citizen without party José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, we’re going “to move in a scheme in which the question is not valid.” In other words, we’re not going to ask who is responsible, by commission or by omission, for those buildings collapsing and hundreds of people dying. No, what we’re going to ask is why it trembled. Then we will be like this, always following that postmodern organic intellectual, on another question: Why do tremors or earthquakes occur or, as is said, when the soil abandons its apparent resignation and moves?
No, if you wait for a scientific explanation, you wait in vain. The valid explanations are the ones that have more followers, listeners, sympathizers and militants. Science has long since lost all popularity contests.
Then, it depends on what scheme those explanations are given.
Let’s go to one of them, Mr. Alberto Villasana, who defines himself, with exemplary modesty, as a “Catholic theologian, Philosopher and International analyst. An expert on Church-State relations, an author of 12 books, 3-time winner of the National Journalism Award,” which his 15, 600 Twitter followers would ratify.
Don’t laugh, that amount far exceeds the attendees, participants and listeners in this gathering.
With respect to the September 19, 2017 earthquake, the illustrious and enlightened Villasana wrote: “This without a doubt a warning from God, a very special grace to Mexico, to prepare us for everything that is coming…“
How did he know? Well, it turns out that Villasana assures at the time of the earthquake he was performing an exorcism on someone possessed by 4 demons. “During the exorcism, the infestators declared that the September 19 earthquake is part of God’s warning before the great punishment,“ he published in his article. Besides the earthquakes, there would be huracanes and volcanic eruptions. According to the theologian, the punishments would be: “for having approved abortion in the same city where the Mother of God appeared in 1531.” According to Villasana, the earthquake, under those arguments, would be a warning to Mexicans. On his Twitter account, he published the image of the rubble of the monument to the Virgin: “The monument to Mother Significant collapsed: in the city where they approved abortion.”
Despite his undisputed wisdom, Villasana is not original. In November 2016, the Italian newspapers pointed out that the priest Giovanni Cavalcoli, who is known for his career as a theologian, made the following statements on Sunday, October 30, the same day that a 6.5-magnitude earthquake shook the central region of Umbria: the seismic shocks are a “divine punishment for the offense to the family and to the dignity of matrimony, above all because of homosexual civil unions.”
The scheme on which this explanation depends has more followers:
Just a few weeks ago, in this December 2017, Cardinal Emeritus Juan Sandoval Iñíguez placed responsibility on women and LGBT community (loas otroas) for organized crime violence and for the earthquakes and floods.
As the platform for such a scientific explanation, Sandoval Iñíguez, convoked a so- called “Great Act of Atonement” that, as I understand it, is like a meeting of Unconscious for the Deity, but with more power to convoke that this one in which we are found. The event was in the so-called Blue Stadium in Mexico City, which, incidentally, has a better location than the CIDECI.
Not to vary, there were also masked men there. But, unlike those who convoke us, who are devoted to talking bad about capitalism, the masked men of Sandoval Iñíguez flogged themselves until bleeding. In other words those are indeed whippings and not the existential ones that crowd together in the social networks.
Between whipping and beating, but careful that blood would not splash, the cardinal emeritus declared that the right to decide and sexual diversity are sins, and that violence from drug trafficking and the earthquakes are punishment for those sins: “The Lord and our God, before a greater punishment comes, sends us temporal punishments or paternal corrections by means of nature that is your work and is governed by your providence. Will it be pure coincidence September 19 in this city?”
The “Great Act of Atonement” event was convoked by a kind of association that could well be called: “The time has come for the sinners to march.” In other words as he says: against those who support the Indigenous Government Council and its spokesperson.
Over there I read that, among those who summoned, there are “public figures,” they say, like Esteban Arce, Manuel Capetillo and Alejandra Rojas. I don’t know how public these people are, I only know that the mother of Esteban Arce must be very remembered among the LGBT community.
In the act, which we now know was not to exorcize the football team that has that stadium as its headquarters (oh well, “all past Cruz Azul was better”), the neoscientist Sandoval Iníguez said: “This is an act of redress, in which we come to make a confession of guilt, to recognize our sins before the Lord and to ask him for mercy and forgiveness. We come to say: Lord, we have sinned against you and committed the evil you hate; forgive your people and set aside the punishment we deserve. We have sinned against you, above all with the most tremendous, most grave and most cruel crime of abortion practiced throughout our country, at times with the consent of iniquitous laws and on occasions hidden, furtively, but always with cruelty, treachery and advantage against the innocent, the defenseless.”
According to press reports, very close to where se azotaban las “brotherhoods of encrusted and flagellant penitents of Taxco” (as they call themselves), signatures were collected to support the ex panista Margarita Zavala in her project of being an independent candidate to the presidency of the republic.
Against the current, and in a different scheme, regarding the recent natural misfortunes, Pope Francisco pointed out: “I think that the Devil punished Mexico with a lot of anger mucha because the Devil doesn’t forgive Mexico that it (pointing to an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe) has shown her son there. It’s ny interpretation. In other words, Mexico is privileged in martyrdom for having recognized and defended his mother.“
So there you have: divine punishment or diabolic punishment. Choose your scheme of explanation about one reality.
“They are mere opinions,” you will say or the influencers closest to your bandwidth.
Ok, ok, ok. But the problem is that decisions are made based on those opinions: there are those who ask for divine forgiveness or embrace pain as privileged martyrdom … and there are those who organize to demand truth and justice.
I’m not going to make firewood from the heavy cross carried by Mrs. Margarita Ester Zavala Gómez del Campo de Calderón (who, disrespectfully and far from all political correctness, the Zapatistas call “La Calderona,” and of whom I, who have always shone for my good manners and for being politically correct, let go).
And I clarify that I pointy out that it’s “Gómez del Campo” to bring to mind the murder of the infants of the ABC Nursery, which occurred on June 5, 2009 in the state of de Sonora, and was managed, among others, by Marcia Matilde Altagracia Gómez del Campo Tonella, exonerated because of being a relative of La Calderona. The memory of that crime is not extinguished, thanks to the fact that the families continue demanding truth and justice.
And I name her as “de Calderón,” because referring to her with her maiden name would be pointing out that she lives as a concubine with the psychopath. Y, as far as my limited studies of Canon Law permit, being a concubine is a sin. Ergo, that would bring us more earthquakes to punish us for the guilt of those who sign in support of her candidacy.
On the other hand, I will make a brief reference to the principal saboteur of her political career, (her concubine, if we pay attention to those who get angry because of naming her by what is his last name according to Catholic, Apostolic and Roman laws), Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.
Mr. Calderón Hinojosa was, 10 years ago, the titleholder of the federal executive power in Mexico. “President,” I believe that they used to say to him. Well, 10 years ago, on the occasion of the floods that devastated the state of Tabasco, the then supreme commander of the army, air force and navy, declared that the responsibility for the more than 125,000 people that had lost their homes and had to take refuge in shelters, was… that of the moon and a cold front.
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The National Action Party competes with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, not only because of the ridicule into which their pre-candidates fall. No, the National Action Party, now with the ballast called the Party of the Democratic Revolution, also disputes the PRI’s complicity in the crime.
If you note in the eyes of Ricardo Anaya, pre-candidate of the PAN-PRD-MC, a demented shine, don’t attribute it to a possible affectation in the area of the brain responsible for decency (indeed, if there is one). It’s the product of a partisan formation of cadre leaders. Ricardo Anaya makes up part of that generation of partisan cadres that grew up as such in the midst of corruption, cynicism, betrayal, fanaticism, intolerance, arrogance, nepotism, ignorance, cretinism… ok, I think I’m describing more than a pre-candidate, but now I’m referring to the alliance of the PAN, PRD and MC called “For Mexico, out front”… and, well, there is an abyss out front. So there you have it.
Along with Acteal and Ayotzinapa, another name refers us to unpunished crime: the ABC Nursery, in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.
And in the six-year term of that consistent thinker who is called Vicente Fox, the PRI, PAN and PRD are allied for the crime called “Atenco,” in May 2006, which included, besides murder, sexual assault on women.
So, everything seems to indicate that the great elector, who certainly doesn’t need the National Electoral Institute, demands evidence of criminality to decide. On their altar, these party proposals offer the blood of women, children, young people, the elderly… and the LGBT community.
And to confirm it, political proposals of the most rancid right arrive in the different posts of murderers that the global political system offers periodically.
Although there are examples in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the Spanish State, Israel, Honduras, Nicaragua, Russia, and you can add the geography you wish, there is one that synthesizes the fateful times to come: Ronaldo Trump.
Besides his undeniable ability and sapience for managing his Twitter account, Ronaldo Trump has defined with transparent clarity the victim to immolate: women, LGBT folks (otroas), infants, immigrants, the environment, and you could continue detailing specificities but, finally, you will come to the same conclusion that I have: the victim is the entire planet, including the humanity that inhabits it.
Although Ronaldo has shown signs of serious mental problems, he has solved the basic equation that every ruler must face: what must I do to stay in power? Occham has been useful and he has opted for the simplest response: a war.
To obtain a war he proposes walls, changes of embassies, provokes diplomatic incidents and thus begs, implores: “give me a war, I ask you! Where it is doesn’t matter. And the bigger the better.” And then, going back centuries, Ronaldo Trump takes Nero’s lyre and sings: “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo, if we do, we have the ships, we have the men and also the money.”
Yes, a war. Or a crime, it depends.
War or crime, it’s a misfortune as never before in the history of humanity.
As if the world as we know it will collapse.
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And since we have referred to video games, imagine that we have the dream of any video addict: a cybernetic interface that permits us, simultaneously, to have the strategic perspective, tactics and that of the first person. Something like a combination of real-time strategy, role-playing, the first person or first person shooter, and the other that I don’t know what it’s called but it’s like in the third person. Anyway, if someday it is created, don’t forget to buttress yourself with the rights of intellectual authorship.
Now, suppose you are enclosed inside an ideal spherical room. The inner surface of the sphere, which you can see, is a large curved screen, with 5K technology, omled or as it is said, and in which, simultaneously and with dizzying speed, information packages are presented to you. Not only images, also sounds, smells, tactile and pleasing sensations; and, well, also, not to discriminate against the esoteric, extrasensory perceptions.
You can think, with a high degree of certainty, that you are in the real world, that you live in that world, that’s where you were born, grew up, reproduced, and, God forbid, but it’s a hypothetical situation, die.
You are happy or unhappy there. The machine is so efficient that it even provides the parameters for defining happiness and unhappiness. Moreover, it also offers an explanation of that world and, if you prefer, of a spiritual world, a consolation for the day on which, I already said God forbid, you die.
So there you are, in the machine that we will call, with prudent impresarial calculations, “the cat-dog’s machine” (all rights reserved).
In what it is, in other words, simulating life or living (because the machine also gives you the criteria to distinguish between “what’s real” about the machine and “what’s virtual” that the same machine produces to give you a point of reference).
Well, suppose that at any time inside of the machine, you are doing what you are supposed to do. In that, who knows from where, a person appears that has nothing to do with anything. You, of course, are a modern person, understanding of the technological limitations and you attribute that irruption to an irregularity in the machine’s complicated software or in its complex hardware. You wait patiently for the irregularity to be solved, that is, you look for the reset button, but the person remains there and, when you least expect it, that person tells you:
“One moment, don’t anyone touch anything, and nobody can leave. This is the scene of a crime.” You doubt. You don’t know whether to complain in support or put a package of popcorn in the microwave, because perhaps it’s about a new episode of “Law and Order, Special Victims Unit” (background music).
But something doesn’t fit because it’s not the detective that appears, but rather another woman. Yes, the machine has given her the pattern that indicates: “woman.” But the above-mentioned wears an embroidered blouse, her stature is smaller than the average that the same machine has inculcado as “average stature,” her complexion is of dark color, we say the color of the earth. The machine gives you the information that you have: “indigenous, or also self-named “originaria,” her geographic location is in the middle region of North America called Mexico, zero or minimal level of school studies, access to technological advances between 0 and 0.1, monolingual although there are cases in which she manages two or more languages, mortality rate, well above average, life expectancy, well below average; cultural persistence, centuries; therefore, indefinite age.
With that information, you now begin to edit the report to support, of course, getting bogged down at the same time with popcorn, because it’s not about wasting the Valentina sauce that covers them:
“Dear programmers, I beg you to solve this flaw because it’s not possible that one (uno, una, unoa) is here perfectly fulfilling the functions that have been assigned to me, and suddenly something so premodern appears. Hurry because the new season of “To the right, the best of possible worlds” is about to start” and the promotional materials are already here. Signature”
The feminine irruption in question has the bad taste of changing the fashionable joke of “I come from the future and…” followed by something ingenious. Oh, don’t worry, the machine also tells you what is and what is not “witty.” Because the, let’s say, original (native) woman now says: “I come from the past and this movie is not a movie and I saw it.” Then you realize that the woman is not alone, there are others that resemble her, although now that they oblige you to look at them you see that they are the same but different. There are also men, well males. And they don’t lack those who are neither one nor the other.
With respect to the programming, those strange beings, anachronistic and, needless to say, irreverent, start sniffing and there is even one who has taken out, who knows from where, a magnifying glass. You are about to applaud, because you think that the machine has been updated and now you can produce a virtual reality inside the virtual reality, but the woman that now the machine labels as “indigenous” without any nuance, studies you in detail. Of course you have the right to feel uncomfortable when, after placing the magnifying glass over the eyes, she says: “Another victim, that the team of rapporteurs writes down.”
“Yes they have a team of rapporteurs, which suggests sugiere some kind of uncatalogued organizational form,” the machine tells you, a little to make yourself useful and another little to give yourself time to self-review your programming.
The group of indigenous people that, you now realize, are a minority but make noise as if they were a majority, meet ti deliberate and, after a while that the machine cannot count or offer a parameter of comparison, decree:
“It’s all here: the victim, the killer, the murder weapon and the crime scene.”
Then you realize that the spherical screen rather resembles a concave wall, and you see, not without becoming alarmed, a little girl, accompanied by a strange being that the machine is incapable of labeling and conforms to a “cat-dog; a mythological being of unknown origin; there is no data that confirms its real existence, virtual that it, but real in the machine, in other words, you understand me don’t you? Well, it depends; probable habitat: the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.” Cfr: “There will be a time,” editions in Spanish, Italian, English, Greek, German, Portuguese, etc”
Well, what alarms you is that the little girl and the so-catalogued “cat-dog” are pointing to a crack in the machine; in other words, in the sphere, that is in the wall.
Now you doubt something that the machine has always avoided until now, between going to review the warranty conditions or running to look at the crack.
Because it turns out that the crack, its possibility, questions not only the machine’s programming but rather its very existence.
Then you feel that you are prisoner in the same paradox as Schrodinger’s cat.
The machine links you quickly to Wikipedia and there you read:
“Erwin Schrödinger outlines a system that is sistema formed by a closed and opaque box that contains a cat inside, a bottle dof poisonous gas and a device that contains a single radioactive particle with a 50% probability of disintegrating at a given time, so that if the particle disintegrates, the poison is released and the cat dies. At the end of the established time, the probability that the device has been activated and the cat is dead is 50%, and the probability that the device has not been activated and the cat is alive has the same value.”
Of course, you no longer follow those parts of quantum mechanics because you feel a slight tremor run through your body.
The machine says “terror” so that you identify that sensation. Because the machine had already labeled that sensory perception, but always, at least until now, had presented it as alien: terror had always been in the other.
All the evidence, all the solid evidence that gave you certainties, values, reasoning and judgment, starts to vanish.
You don’t know if you are alive or dead vivo, there is a 50% probability of one or the other, and you shudder, but not because you are about to find out your existential condition, but rather because of the question that the crack poses, like who it says moves the discussion:
“Is another world possible?”
“It is,” responds the little girl that now carries a ball under one arm and, over her head, something that could be a cat… or a dog.
You, of course, are a person with knowledge and self-apply “Occham’s razor” interpreted as the simplest explanation is probably the most correct. Then you say to yourself: “I am dreaming.”
What do you do while you decide whether you’re in a dream or a nightmare? Do you look at the crack or continue doing what you were doing when that irreverent and disobedient noise appeared?
For this what originally was a group of indigenous people, is now a larger collective: there are people of all colores, some who wield a hammer and smile complicitly when he heads to the wall where, oh, oh, it seems that they want to make the crack bigger.
And there are those who dance, and who paint, and who imagine a frame for the shot, and who write hastily, and even sing, and there is one who is weighing a microscope to see whether to throw it at the spherical wall or if it’s better that the scalpel will have to do it to the crack.
And, just a moment, where did that marimba come from?
And now they are playing football and the little girl, who to save explanations, hangs a badge that reads: “Defensa Zapatista” asks you what your name is, and then you understand that that she is not asking for your name-name, but your position for a supposed team that wasn’t complete.
And you already feel the terror that has taken over your whole being, because your intuition tells you that in reality the little girl is asking:
“And, what about you?”
From the CIDECI-UniTierra, Chiapas,
SupGaleano.
Mexico, December 2017
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF THE CAT-DOG: THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE DISAPPEARED BISCUITS
Elías Contreras is a Zapatista compañero who has the job of the investigation commission, a detective; in other words, he’s like a lookout. Elías Contreras is deceased, just like Sup Marcos and they worked together to look for bad and evil. Elías now works at times with SupMoy, although every so often he chats with Sup Galeano.
Este brief summary should help you understand what occurred one afternoon this December in the EZLN’s General Command, where Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés quoted the aforementioned Elías Contreras.
“Elías,” said Sup Moy after responding to the militar salute from the investigation commission, “there is a problem.”
Elías Contreras said nothing; he just took out a little bender and a few strands of tobacco, and dedicated himself to forging a cigarette while he listened to Sup Moy:
“It’s in then region’s cooperativa store. They say that some merchandise is missing, that it disappeared. They asked me if someone could support. Are you in charge?”
Elías Contreras only uttered a sound like “mmh,” and left without saying a word. The person in charge of the store just greeted Elías with a gesture, as he was balancing the monthly account.
What was it that disappeared then,” preguntó Elias asked while he looked distractedly at the DVDs that were for sale, the majority of them with the seal of ellos con el sello de “Los Tercios Compas.” “The biscuits,” said the man in charge without taking his eyes off the notebook where he suffered with the accounts.
“And how do you know they’re missing,” Elías asks while he checks out the shelf.
“Because nobody buys them, they were always there, like free.”
“And if nobody buys them what’s the problem?”
“The vigilance commission,” the one in charge sighed resigned, “the count has to be exact; if not, well we must replace or punish.”
Elías Contreras snorted and leaned over to pick up a few strands of black tobacco at the foot of the counter.
He left.
“Sup,” he said when he was now at the door of Sup Galeano’s house.
“Elías,” the Sup responded without looking away from a screen wired to an old laptop computer.
“It’s fucked up,” the Sup wants to clarify, “the screen is broken, but the processor and everything else is fine, so I connected it to this monitor. I just adapted the keyboard, but I can’t find the mouse.”
He turned in his wheelchair and looked at Elías.
“The biscuits,” the investigation commission said.
“They’re all gone,” the Sup said, “Defensa Zapatista and her dog… or cat… or whatever it is ate them.”
“But I have some pinole bread that the male insurgents made. How do you know that the male insurgentes made it? Well because it rose; when the women insurgents make it, it’s flattened.”
Elías rolled a cigarette passed the matches to the Sup for his pipe.
“And now,” Sup Galeano asked after waiting for Elías Contreras to light his cigar.
“Well they’re going to set you to doing the storekeeper’s accounts; of course, in addition to replacing the money. But I didn’t come for that. There is a thought that I want to talk to you about…”
A few hours later, Elías Contreras, investigation commission of the EZLN, left Sup Galeano’s house and stopped a moment to see the evening already give in to the shadows of the night.
With the flashlight he lit the way to the general command of the ezetaelene. Now at the door, without entering, he saluted and said: “The Sup, some biscuits.”
Sup Moy smiled and said to himself: “Well, someone had to do those accounts.”
In the general assembly it didn’t go badly for Sup Galeano, but not good either. After “self-criticizing him” for eating junk food and not eating well (they told him that the biscuits that they make in the CIDECI bakery are better), the authorities gave him the worst dieron punishment that there currently is in the community: doing the accounts of the cooperatives.
The Sup lit his pipe upon leaving the assembly and, while he was heading to the cooperative “As the women that we are,” he said to himself: “well, it could be worse, in different times they would have sent me to clean the paddock.”
He did the accounts quickly, not because he knew mathematics, but because he did them with the cell phone that he “borrowed” from the comandancia when Sup Moy called him to scold him. Nor was it a great cell phone, it was one of those “low end” ones that wasn’t useful for capturing the signatures that the first world INE set as requirements on aspiring third-world candidates, but the calculator did work for addition and subtraction.
He found Elías at the foot of the Ceiba tree, such as they had been.
The odors of both tobaccos intermingled with the silences. Dialogue between the deceased, deaf and dumb dialogue.
Neither of the two remembers who asked: “How much time?” but they know that both answered in unison: “a little, very little.”
I testify:
The cat-dog
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Originally Published in Spanish by the Editor of Proceso.com.mx
Thursday, December 28, 2017.
Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee
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