By: Nestor Jiménez

Before the departure of the “Zapatista Airborne Company” called La Extemporánea, the Mexico City International Airport stopped its activities for a moment. Travelers and workers attentively observed the contingent with whom some would share a flight moments later.

Without their customary ski masks to comply with the air terminal’s security requirements, they used face-masks, health shields and caps.

We’re talking about the 177 delegates who traveled yesterday on a first flight at noon and another at night to Vienna, Austria, prior to a stopover in Madrid, for the purpose of “dialoguing, listening, and proposing” with different organizations that invited them to the old continent.

The first group, made up of men, women and some children from the “play and mischief” collective, crossed the security filter slowly at 8 o’clock in the morning in front of the personnel who delayed the review of more than 80 Zapatistas with passports in hand, among them Subcomandante Moisés.

Later on the process was more agile, it only took 10 minutes for the whole group to pass the first filter and reach the security lines. [See photo below in the Mexico City Airport.]

Otomís who are occupying the building belonging to the National Institute of Indigenous Pueblos organized the farewell with signs and banners on which they wished the travelers luck.

“They come to listen to them, and to us also; they carry our seed to continue in this struggle for life, it’s to defend our Mother Earth, it’s to go to share struggles and share our pains and also to see that there is another possible world. Unfortunately, we also have a lot of violence; compañeros have gone missing for defending life, our Mother Earth,” explained Isabel, a delegate of the Otomi community.

It’s not the first group to travel to Europe. Just last Saturday the maritime delegation called Squadron 421 returned from traveling in a ship and spending two and a half months on that continent.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/09/14/politica/007n1pol

Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee