From the EZLN’s Capitán, at Enlace Zapatista.

August 2024.

Let’s assume, without conceding, that you can imagine the following:

You were born in an indigenous town. In a community you acquired your language, your culture, your way. All this makes you different. For official anthropology, your language is a “dialect” and your people are an “ethnicity.” You are what progressives call “an Indian.” Your skin color doesn’t matter, because as soon as you start saying something, you will notice the gesture of contempt of your non-indigenous interlocutor. You will also see how that person instinctively puts his hand in his pocket to give you a coin. That person will assume that you are inferior, ignorant, dirty, poor, superstitious, manipulable… and stupid. But, whatever, that’s how you were born. No matter what you do, nothing will change the other’s attitude. Just as culturally one is indigenous, so too is one racist by culture, even if it is a “cool” racism.

Now let us assume, without conceding, that your native people, your language, your culture, your way, is the Cho’ol, a people of Mayan origin, who live in the southeastern Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche.

Let us assume, without conceding, that, like all native peoples, you have suffered contempt, racism, injustice, beatings, deceit and mockery – in addition, of course, to forced disappearances, imprisonments, rapes and murders – just for being who you are: a Cho’ol indigenous person.

Let us assume, without conceding, that you know that a part of the indigenous peoples in Chiapas, including the Cho’ol people, are part of an organization called ee-zee-el-en (also known as “the Zapatistas of Chiapas” or “neo-Zapatistas” or “transgressors of the law” or whatever is in fashion), which took up arms on January 1, 1994, in what they called “the beginning of the war against oblivion,” and thus put an end to Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s plan for a trans-sexennial Power (before it was the wet dream of Salinas, and now it is that of Morenoism).

Let us assume, without conceding, that you are not an official anthropologist or historiographer, that is, that you know that, for centuries, the indigenous peoples have been treated by modernity (different but similar governments and periods) with a mixture of disgust and pity. And that you know that these natives exist, live and fight beyond books, museums, tourist destinations, crafts and government speeches.

Let us suppose, without conceding, that you know that these Zapatista peoples are in rebellion and resistance because they have undertaken the path of a terrible and marvelous construction: another world, one where all worlds fit.

Let us suppose, without conceding, that you, as Cho’ol, had the bad luck of being born and living near the farm of a powerful person.

Let us suppose, without conceding, that your name or your grace is José Díaz Gómez, and you are imprisoned in a jail in Chiapas accused of being a Cho’ol and of… being a Zapatista.

Now, changing the channel, let’s suppose that you can have access to what is being said in courts, police stations and prisons in Chiapas. Not without embarrassment, you hear the following: “He is a Zapatista, one of those who criticize and do not support the president.” “The boss will be happy that we punished one of the conservatives who refuse to be saved by modernity and progress (i.e. the 4T).”

Now, let’s suppose, without conceding, that your freedom, Cho’ol and Zapatista, depends on multiple factors: the mood of the judge that day, the public ministry, the police, the other farmers (that is, in addition to the one who has his farm in Palenque), the need that little gray men have to ingratiate themselves with superiors who do not even know they exist.

Let’s suppose that you know that a non-governmental organization defending human rights (one of those so vilified by the Supreme Court — along with paid media workers) has proven your innocence, and the accusing party cannot even present the slightest evidence against your freedom — and that of your other colleagues who are being persecuted. But it is useless because you are not innocent of the two crimes for which you have been imprisoned for almost two years: being indigenous and being a Zapatista.

Now, let’s suppose, without conceding, that you go, simultaneously, to the Zócalo of Mexico City and contemplate an iron and papier-mâché structure that, it is assumed, without conceding, is a replica of a Mayan pyramid.

Let us suppose, without conceding, that you then reflect and conclude that this is what indigenism in Mexico is: a cardboard simulation as a tribute to a distant past (and manipulable in official historiography), and thousands of injustices “administered” by the government in power, against indigenous peoples in the present. For governments, indigenous peoples are the raw material for their factory of “historical” alibis… and of culprits.

Now, let us suppose, without conceding, that you have been commissioned — given your ability and, above all, that you are not a Zapatista Cho’ol — to give a master lecture, at the school of cadres of THE PARTY, called “The revolution of consciences in the Fourth Transformation.”

Would you feel bad? At least uncomfortable? Out of place?

Or, like most of your coreligionists, would you say “it’s all for the good of the movement and so that the extreme right doesn’t return,” “the Zapatistas had their moment, but they are no longer fashionable”?

So you could conclude that, if you were not indigenous, if you were not a Zapatista and if you were not critical of the government in power, you would be free and would not have wasted two years of your life?

Of course, all this assuming, without conceding, that you have imagination, sensitivity and a sense of justice.

And, of course, that you are not a scoundrel. Or a scoundrella, (don’t forget gender parity).

Okay. Cheers and stop looking up, the fight for life is from below.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

El Capitán.

August 2024.

P.S.- All “modern” justice systems are unreformable. They are based on an assumption that is daily refuted by reality: “all people are equal before the law.” And no, because “he who pays, rules.”

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Translated by the Chiapas Support Committee. Published by Enlace Zapatista here.