By the Observatorio Memoria y Libertad

The most powerful ammunition of the Zapatistas are their bullets of verses, theater, and music; poetry. It is enough to read their proclamations, their proclamations, communiques and stories to confirm it.

A struggle against capitalism is won more easily when the first purpose of the insurgents is to open consciences; awaken people to the ominous reality that this capitalist hydra will continue to devour, without mercy, everything in its path.

Real bullets have never worked; they have wasted the blood of youth, childhood, of women and men who succumb to lead, to its cold.

Verse, music, dance, theater and colors will, therefore, be ammunition to defeat that hydra and, at the same time (and completely), not let that flower, the flower of the word, die; the one with old roots.

Zapatista art is an example of oratory, a rhetoric that comes out naturally, in an organic way. And being in Zapatista territory is, in itself, poetic.

Clouds pouring between the mountains like waterfalls; starry nights like nowhere else; a Mayan past, ancestral native languages; a fight for freedom; a fight against capitalism and death and destruction, all of that is a formula, one that creates rhetoric; In every look of every insurgent there is a metaphor, a mirror, a simile, like a heart on fire.

If to all this mystical nature, if to all this fantastic and rebellious everyday life, we add a good sense of humor, good comedy, what Juan Villoro calls the “rebellious condition of laughter,” we obtain ammunition, bullets, poetic weapons, joyful rebellion; a very happy rebellion, worthy of the use of irony. Let’s take as an example the phrase “sorry for the inconvenience, this is a revolution,” a phrase reproduced during the armed uprising of the war against oblivion in 1994.

When we add revolution to art, we obtain consciousness; we get another way to fight; This is how the compas show us, this is what old Antonio would tell us, perhaps, the one who, with stories of the grandparents, the first who made the world, reveal the Zapatista traditions, or like the beetle as shield bearer and battle advisor, Don Durito, who accompanies the Zapatista struggle and will accompany it until freedom is achieved.

As the afternoon went on, plays produced by the children of the different Caracoles were presented in the center of the enormous dance floor. Theatrical works with completely critical and humorous plots, with social, political and cultural plots and that, immersive, carried a criticism focused on the conscious. Artistic and critical childhoods, who, without hesitation, recited their lines one by one and without any fear, represented their characters.

Plays whose theme included the labor exploitation of the land-owners towards the laborers; the so-called projects of death and destruction carried out by bad governments; satires of the different presidents and their cynical attacks on life and liberty.

The afternoon continued, and the children continued teaching artistic expression, not only with theater, but also with dances, full dances in which the dance was syncretized with the historical representation of the Zapatista struggle.

Those who will guide the future and trace the paths will be the children and youth; and, looking at these plays that were not only beautiful in the aesthetic and technical sense, they were critical. Boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 15, staging works in which the Zapatista struggle, the corruption of bad governments and projects of death and destruction were represented, is without a doubt a light of hope within the EZLN struggle. Zapatista childhoods are shared, they are intelligent, critical and rebellious, worthy rebels.

The Zapatistas have always fought with language as a weapon, with poetry and verses like bullets, with murals as expressions and ways to immortalize their history and their struggle.

Just read their communiques; their statements; their stories; poems, with seeing their plays and witnessing the Zapatista dances. It is enough to dance among militiawomen and militiamen who smile with joyful rebellion.

Art is the most powerful, least violent and most human weapon, to fight, defend and resist in the battle for the liberation of the earth and those who work on it.

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Published February 2, 2024 by Observatorio Memoria y Libertad at: https://memoriaylibertad.wixsite.com/inicio/post/del-arte-como-fusil-revolucionario-reflexiones-desde-territorio-zapatista Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee.